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Washington Edition 


VOLUME XII 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 
A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 
RALPH HENRY GABRIEL 


EDITOR 


HENRY JONES FORD HARRY MORGAN AYRES 
ASSOCIATE EDITORS 


OLIVER McKEE 
ASSISTANT EDITOR 


CHARLES M. ANDREWS ALLEN JOHNSON 
HERBERT E. BOLTON WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO 
IRVING N. COUNTRYMAN VICTOR H. PALTSITS 
WILLIAM E. DODD ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER 
DIXON RYAN FOX NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON 


ADVISORY EDITORS 


DAVID M. MATTESON 
INDEXER 


From the painting by John La Farge (1835-1910) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


THE M 


, OF PAINTING 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THE AMERICAN 
Seawll IN ART 


BY 
FRANK JEWETT /MATHER, JR. 
CHARLES RUFUS MOREY 


WILLIAM JAMES HENDERSON 


NEW HAVEN -: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
TORONTO - GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. 
LONDON - HUMPHREY MILFORD 


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1927 


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COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS | 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


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CHAPTER 


XVII. 
XVIII. 


XIX. 
XX. 
XXI. 
Bax LT = 


XXITI. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Foreworp. The American Spirit in Art 


PAINTING (F. J. M., Jr.) 

. Colonial Portraiture 

. Early Republican Portraiture 

. Early Historical Painting 

. Genre Painting Before the Civil War 

. Landscape Before the Civil War 

. Our Heroic Landscape, 1850-1880 

. Genre Painting from the Civil War to 1890 

. Early Visionaries, 1860-1900 

. Intermediate Portraiture, 1860-1876 

. Whistler and La Farge 

. The Great Landscape School, 1865-1895 
XI. 

XIT. 
XIV. 
XV. 
XVI. 


Portraitists of Parisian Tendency, 1876- 
Mural Painting 


Luminism and its Sequels in ae ica, 1890— . 


Portrait and Figure Painting, 1880-1895 
Recent Visionaries — The Modernists 
SCULPTURE (C. R. M.) 


Early American Sculpture 
Sculpture Since the Centennial 


GRAPHIC ARTS (F. J. M., Jr.) 


Reproductive Engraving 


-Painter-Engraving 


Illustration : ; 
Social and Political Caricature 


MUSIC: (W-J.H)) 


Musical Art in America 
Index 


PAGE 


65 


319 
345 


THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN ART 


RT,” Ralph Adams Cram once remarked, turning his attention for the moment 
from the creation of Gothic churches, “‘is not only a function of the soul, an 
inalienable heritage of man, an attribute of all godly and righteous society; 

it is also the language of all spiritual ventures and experiences, while, more potently 
than any other of the works of man, it proclaims the glory of God, revealing in symbolical 
form some measure of that absolute truth and that absolute beauty that are His being.” 
Many times students have scanned the paintings and sculptured pieces, the buildings, 
and the poetry in an attempt to discover the spiritual adventures and experiences of this 
folk of European stock whose habitations reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Many 
harsh judgments have been passed upon a people whose spirit never seemed to rise above 
its farms and mines, its machines, and its shops. The vigorous life within the borders 
of the United States, the sprawling cities, the rattling factories, the ceaseless nervous 
activity of its citizens, have given the impression that America is materialistic and that 
the worship of Mammon is the true national religion of this western republic. Sadly 
enough since the World War, when America has become rich surpassing all nations, 
“Americanism” has come to symbolize for millions of people the world over, that lust 
for gold which consumes all finer emotions. And this has come to pass in a day when 
thousands of Americans look up reverently each year to Saint-Gaudens’ Lincoln, and find 
that graven image a satisfying representation of their national idealism. 

True it is that America has been slow to develop art. The reasons are not difficult 
to discover. The folk from the British isles who crossed to North America in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries were not, as a race, endowed with the artistic sensibility 
of the French or the Italians. British genius, while capable at times of fine artistic work, 
has more commonly expressed itself in other forms of intellectual and emotional activity 
than that of the canvas and chisel. Eighteenth-century Americans showed a truly 
British genius in the political structures they created following the American Revolution; 
but they produced no sculpture, and but little painting and poetry worth the name. And 
this despite the fact that the English colonies had witnessed, particularly in the Hudson 
valley and in the South, the emergence of a well-defined aristocracy. Before the French 
Revolution, Kenyon Cox has noted, art “had been distinctively an aristocratic art, 
created for kings and princes, for the free citizens of slave-holding republics, for the 
spiritual and intellectual aristocracy of the church and for a luxurious and frivolous 
nobility.” In the Spanish colony of Mexico a white aristocracy, influenced somewhat by 
contact with the artistic Indian, called into being not only churches and cathedrals more 
magnificent than anything in the English colonies but some painters and other artistic 
craftsmen of real ability (see Vol. I). To the life of the British colonies the Indian made 
no ‘artistic contribution, the northern Indians were quite uncivilized and were pushed 


1 


2 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


out of the way as rapidly as possible by the conquering white. Of much greater conse- 
quence was the fact that the planter aristocracy was scarcely a century old as contrasted 
with the accumulated experience of more than two centuries on the Mexican plateau. 
Moreover, there was among the English settlers no religious hierarchy like that which 
played such an important part in the art life not only of Mexico but of Europe, and no 
urban center for the intellectual life of the provinces. What Paris has been to France 
or Pekin to China, Mexico City was to the Valley of Anahuac in the days of the Spanish 
colonial empire. But this ancient capital of the Aztecs had no counterpart on the 
Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Georgia. The Anglican church in the southern colonies 
was a rural church for a thinly settled plantation country. No bishops or archbishops 
traveled in magnificence from parish to parish. Farther north the dissenting Quakers of 
Pennsylvania and the Puritans of New England were definitely opposed to the use of art in 
connection with the ministrations of religion. To such folk beauty, whether of ritual or 
altar, smacked of popery and they would have none of it. In a day when aristocracies 
were almost the sole patrons of art the temporal aristocracy in the British North American 
colonies had yet to acquire the traditions which come from a long heritage, and a spiritual 
aristocracy was, in the medizval sense, non-existent. Then came, at the end of the 
eighteenth century, the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The first 
severely shook the aristocracy of the New World and the latter that of the Old. It has 
been the fortune of the American people, therefore, to be compelled to lay the founda- 
tions of their art life in a century which found the artists of western Europe struggling 
to adjust themselves to the new freedom, the new thoughts and ways of life that followed 
the passing of the ancien régime. 

The trickle of adventurous American students who in the first half of the nineteenth 
century crossed the Atlantic to study under the supervision of the masters found their 
tutors divided into different schools of thought in accordance with the freedom of the 
new day. Their technique learned, these young Americans returned to participate in 
the vigorous life of a virile pioneering people. The first half of the nineteenth century 
was a time of swift material development when the frontier was sweeping westward 
across the continent. It was also a time of tense emotion as the antagonisms engendered 
by the divergent civilizations of the North and the South finally flamed in civil war. The 
returning artists found a people too engrossed with the task of forging a nation to give 
much heed to canvases or marble. The frontier and the expanding commercial and 
industrial life of the East absorbed the fluid capital of America so that the money available 
for the accumulation of art treasures west of the Atlantic or for the endowment of schools 
of the fine arts was not large in amount. Americans, for the most part staying at home 
engrossed in a multiplicity of activities, were almost completely isolated from the world 
of beauty as expressed in painting and sculpture. Much as the returned student might 
admire his fellow countrymen he could get from them but small appreciation of his 
careful brush strokes — and he could sell them but few pictures. Yet much the same 
spirit that took some Americans across the continent to found their homes amid the fir 
trees of Oregon held others to the task of bringing to the people of the western republic the 
artistic heritage of Europe. As the nineteenth century merged into the twentieth the 
labors of our artist pioneers began to bear fruit. 


THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN ART 3 


Several factors contributed to this result. By the end of the nineteenth century the 
fires of the Civil War period had largely burned themselves out. Young men from the 
North and the South had fought shoulder to shoulder under the old flag against the battal- 
ions of Spain. The United States had acquired an empire reaching half way round the 
world. A new national consciousness took the place of the old sectional bitterness. The 
American people achieved economic unity, and in the World War a spiritual unity sur- 
passing anything in their history. If national feeling ranks with religious feeling as an 
inspiration for art, twentieth-century America has at last established a solid foundation 
for artistic development. Countless buildings, public and private, in the North and the 
South, the East and the West, are being decorated with murals filled with the spirit of 
America. Religion, too, again moves the artist as in times gone by. The harsh creeds of 
many of the early sects have been softened, and beauty has come once more into the 
churches. Cathedrals, like those of the Middle Ages, are arising in twentieth-century 
America (see Vol. XIII). Within their walls the quest of God continues. But outside 
the dim interiors where the altar candles flicker the quest of God goes on also in the full 
light of day. Americans have begun to turn to nature, so long as enemy to be overcome, 
with an almost pagan wistfulness. John Burroughs, the prophet of the out-of-doors, and 
Winslow Homer, the matchless painter of the sea, were contemporaries. The ideals 
they cherished still live and grow in influence to move men in all walks of life. 

Idealism has not died with America’s mounting wealth nor has materialism crushed 
the finer sensibilities of this people of the United States. The wealth of America has 
brought to the New World much of the best of the art work of the Old and has made it 
possible for the poorest American to enrich his life by contact with the spirits of the 
greatest artists of ancient and modern times. It has founded schools for the education 
and discipline of the artistic impulse of such students as care to come and can qualify for 
admittance. It has sent other students to foreign lands to broaden their artistic training. 
It has made it possible for the American man of affairs to decorate his habitation and 
refresh his spirit with bits of true beauty and this, in turn, has enabled the artist to live. 
America has ceased to be on the periphery of the European culture area. It has become 
part of its generative center. The art life of this trans-Atlantic people, so long retarded 
by more pressing national tasks, has just begun. 

Ravey H. GAaBrie 


CHAPTER I 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 


OR the first century and a half of American painting, the chief concern is with 
2 portraiture. We may note a period of rude beginnings, which ends, about 1740, 
with the advent of such reasonably trained face painters as Smibert, Feke, and 
Pelham. The late colonial face painters, with Copley as their leader, occupy the field 
from about 1740 to 1790. From that time, largely under Benjamin West’s influence, our 
portrait painting follows the English manner, with a great gain in general competence. 
The sturdy settlers of the Eastern coast of the present United States brought little 
knowledge of art with them, and probably even less love. ‘The great collectors of Eng- 
land were persons whom the Puritan exiles had every reason to suspect — the Catholic 
Earls of Arundel, the autocratic Charles I, the libertine Duke of Buckingham. Besides, 
the hard conditions of pioneer life, the smallness of the houses, the statutory bareness 
of the churches, the absence of any long-lived organizations for culture or public adminis- 
tration made pictures a superfluity. However, as the British colonies, ever zealous for 
book learning, gained in wealth, and the towns of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, 
Newport and Charleston, grew into substantial little cities, the self-esteem of the citizens 
properly grew with their towns. Lest their efforts to found families and to found states 
be forgotten, they enlisted the portraitist, or as they would have called him more accu- 
rately the “‘limner” or “face painter.” 

We have to do in almost all cases of face painters before 1750 either with home- 
bred amateurs or with foreign adventurers whose scanty talents would hardly have 
commanded a living in Europe. Their styles were naturally as heterogeneous as their 
origins. It could not afford a basis for an American manner. In mentioning them at 
all, an art critic is performing the alien duties of a historian. 

By the middle of the eighteenth century, our colonial face painting begins to assume 
a more standardized and professional look. John Smibert had come to New England 
in 1729, bringing with him some faint flavor of Italian studies and, what was more useful, 
his own copies after Van Dyck. 

Peter Pelham, meanwhile, made excellent engravings at Boston, and doubtless 
possessed many sterling English prints after that very competent portraitist, Sir Godfrey 
Kneller. In 1727 Pelham painted the characterful portrait of the Reverend Cotton 
Mather and that of his nephew, Mather Byles, which are in the American Antiquarian 
Society at Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1748, John Copley’s widowed mother became 
Pelham’s wife. We must suppose then that Copley came up with a certain knowledge 
of good pictures, if only in engraved form, and that when in 1771 he rejoiced in the copies 
of Titians and Correggios which he studied at Philadelphia and in the original Van Dycks 
which he saw, or thought he saw, at New Brunswick, New Jersey, he was merely con- 

4 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 5 


firming youthful tastes. Yet Copley, doubtless profiting by his stepfather’s precepts 
and by Smibert’s copies, was essentially self-taught. Few artists have had a more dogged 
-and patient eye. To make the figure exist as mass, to seek the glint of stuffs, to search 
the minuter forms and the character were second nature to him. Finer shades of com- 
plexion and texture were ignored in his heavy and cautious renderings. Gilbert Stuart 
later decried the leatheriness of the effect. Yet it is doubtful if the early Copleys would 
be better if they were more dexterous and gracious. His is an extraordinary gallery of 
the New England makers of the nation. We have, well discriminated, the massive iras- 
cibility of John Adams and the somewhat dandified egotism of John Hancock and the 
massive eagerness of the engraver and silversmith, Nathaniel Hurd. The colonial women 
also live amazingly on his canvases. One ordinarily feels a somewhat conscious and 
stilted dignity, coupled with a little natural worriment at being the spouses of such form- 
idable husbands. But there are also certain female portraits of marvelous geniality — 
Epes Sargent’s wife in her riding habit, that portentous Mrs. Fort, of Hartford, who 
has manifestly outlived all hesitations. And there are a few pastels of young women of 
the most flowerlike delicacy, assuring us that the breed has not really changed between 
John Copley and Alden Weir. These pictures will always have a rustic look among 
fine portraits of the standard traditions, but they will also hold their own in any com- 
pany for sheer force of character. Certainly a more fluent method would not improve 
them, and when, in his later English years, Copley attained urbanity, what his art gained 
in professionalism it more than lost in interest. He had been forced to sacrifice an un- 
disputed primacy in America to a quite hopeless competition with such masters of por- 
traiture as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough, and Raeburn. 

It is one of the ironies of history that Copley, upon whom we depend for the looks of 
. the Yankee founders of the Republic, was a Loyalist, driven in the fullness of his 
powers to England, where, an esteemed second-rater, he flourished as a painter of por- 
traits and contemporary history. One likes to imagine that with other politics and fates, 
he might have founded an American school of portraiture and historical painting far 
superior to that which soon came into being under the auspices of that ever patriotic 
expatriate, Benjamin West. But Copley was taken from us when he was only thirty- 
eight, and, sadly enough, our irreparable loss was not greatly England’s gain. Copley 
is the only great painter America produced before the Revolution, and while the anti- 
quarian fervor that is rediscovering scores of his painter contemporaries brings interesting 
genealogical and historical results, nothing has been or is likely to be discovered that will 
shake John Copley’s solitary eminence at the beginnings of our art. 

Copley’s contemporaries, such as Feke, Matthew Pratt, and Charles Willson Peale, 
require little more attention than is furnished by the cuts. Peale was fortunate in 
painting early and intimate portraits of Washington, which are invaluable to the historian 
and biographer. Among the portraitists active before the War of Independence only 
Abraham Delanoy, Jr., and Henry Benbridge are likely to get a second look from the art 
lover, though the antiquarian and genealogist finds excellent account in them. 


6 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM READ 


Wiuu1am READ, who was apparently the first portrait 
painter to practice in the British Colonies of America, was 
born about 1607 at Balcombe, England, and died at or 
near Norwich, Connecticut, in 1679. This portrait of the 
scarlet-gowned Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony is 
dated 1641 and signed W. R. By a series of convinc- 
ing inferences, Thomas B. Clarke has identified the 
painter with William Read who in 1665 was paid for an 
“exact mapp” of the Colony. Read’s artistic education 
was apparently limited to observation of the average 
English portraiture of King James’ reign. One feels, 
however, that he has told a truthful story about his 
melancholy and fanatical sitter. Bellingham had been a 
notable persecutor of the heretic and the godless colonists, 
and completely looks the part. 


iy 


1 From the portrait of Governor Richard Bellingham 
in the possession of Thomas B. Clarke, New York 


JACOBUS GERRITSEN STRYCKER 
New AmsterDAM had a far richer artistic back- 
ground than Boston. The work of the first painter, 
Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker, is of a more than 
competent sort. He was born at Ruinen in Holland 
and died in New Amsterdam in 1687. Strycker 
came to New Netherlands in 1651, bringing a wife 
of the Huybrechts family who was possibly re- 
lated to the Huybrechts girl who married Rem- 
brandt’s son Titus. Strycker had profitably 
studied the masterpieces of Rembrandt’s early and 
middle manner, and is skillful both as a painter 
and observer of character. Since the sitter died in 
1665, we may date the panel a little earlier. 


2 From the portrait of Adrian Van Der Donk in the possession 
of Thomas B. Clarke, New York 


HENRI COUTURIER 


STRYCKER came from the native Dutch school. His successor, 
Henri Couturier, seems to derive from a Holland obsessed by 
France and artistically decadent. Of Couturier we have very 
little information. This portrait attests a really powerful 
gift for characterization. The artist was in New Amsterdam 
as early as 1663 and died there in 1684. One may imagine 
that he had admired in Holland the Gallicized artists of the 
type of Nicholas Maes. The sitter died in 1684, aged 74 
years. ‘To judge by his appearance, this fine portrait may 


3 From the portrait of Oloff Stevense Van Cortlandt ° ° 
in the possession of Thomas B. Clarke, New York have been painted some ten years earlier. 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 


~ 


UNKNOWN ARTIST 
(about 1675) 
ALONGSIDE painters with a modi- 
cum of European training we 
occasionally find naive native 
talents based on unguided ob- 
servation and patience. Such 
was the painter, probably a 
Dutchman, who about 1675 
painted the delightful portrait of 
Madam Elizabeth Freake and 
Baby Mary. This genuinely 
primitive work, full of dogged 
character and charmingly tena- 
cious research of detail, can 
hardly be the work of a foreign 
face painter — they never took 
such pains—but is rather a 
precious homemade product of 
colonial America. The com- 
panion piece, Mr. Freake, is only 
less attractive. Such works are 
visible reminders to twentieth- 
century folk of the elegance 
that civilization in seventeenth- 
century America soon attained. 
A modern matron might envy 
Madam Freake her supply of fine 

lace. 


4 From the portrait of Madam Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary, loaned by Andrew Wolcott 
Sigourney and Mrs. W. B. Scofield to the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass. 


GERRET DUYCKINCK 
At New York there flourished a family of Duyckincks who 
for three generations were successful face painters. It is 
the most continuous artistic succession that America has 
seen, being rivaled only by the three generations of Hills, 
engravers, and the Peales in the last century. However, the 
Duyckincks show no progress from father to son and re- 
main at a low level of accomplishment. One Duyckinck will 
be enough, and we select Gerret, who, apart from the rigid 
sort of portraiture represented by our cut, is on record as 
making stained glass for a church at Esopus, New York, in 
1679, being perhaps the first practitioner of what was much 
later to be a peculiarly American art. His rude work in 
portraiture shows that he was self-trained, though he may 
have looked at prints after Lely and Maes. He was born in 
New Amsterdam, in 1660, worked mostly at Albany and died 
in 1710. The active years of his life fell entirely within the 
period when the fair region of the Hudson valley was an 
English province. Both New York and Albany were trading 
centers where wealth was accumulated sufficient to warrant 
galleries of family portraits. Duyckinck lived in the years 


5 From the trait of Mrs. Augustus Jay in the : 2 
Mew Work Historical Boolety when the aristocracy of New York was taking form. 


8 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


6 From the portrait of Judge Samuel Sewall in 


the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston 


lot among them. 


8 From a self-portrait in the Historical Society 
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 


courtly style 
of Sir Peter Lely. It is indeed to Lely or Kneller 
that family portraits by Bridges are generally 
attributed. We know nothing of Bridges’ English 
origins and can only vaguely guess that he was 
active in Virginia between 1730 and 1750. A 
courtly quality in his style was rare in the colonies 
and somewhat makes up for his feebleness. One 
can see why he found favor among the planter 
gentry of the Old Dominion. They possibly would 
not have accepted the ruthless fidelity of a Copley. 
Indeed, they were prone to have their portraits 
painted abroad. Some had doubtless seen examples 
of Lely’s work when taking their customary trips 
to England. America has never produced an aris- 
tocracy more urbane or more brilliant than that 
of Virginia in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Fortunate indeed the portrait painter who cast his 


NATHANIEL EMMONS 


RetuRNING to Boston, we find a slightly better state of things. 
Nathaniel Emmons, who was born in Boston in 1703 and died there 
in 1740, is a limner of fair skill. Among his sitters was the famous 
magistrate and diarist Samuel Sewall. The portrait seems a true if 
not a very speaking likeness of the Boston judge who publicly re- 
pented his severity in the witchcraft trials and kept a diary in which 
posterity has delighted for its shrewd and humorous characterization 
of the writer himself and of his aristocratic Boston neighbors. 


CHARLES BRIDGES 


Cuar_es Brivces was born in England, and was active in Virginia 
about 1730-50. In the delightful journals of Colonel William Byrd of 
Westover, Bridges is mentioned under the year 1735 as painting the 
Byrd children. It is clear from this charming portrait of Maria Byrd, 
the Colonel’s second wife, that the visiting me painter had 
studied the 


Ce ee ee eee 


7 ‘tron the porta ee Maria Taylor Byrd in the Mettopolithe 
seum of Art, New York 


GUSTAVUS HESSELIUS 

Tue colonies of the Middle Atlantic range seem to have been 
quite devoid of native talent in painting, depending on foreign 
face painters who came and went. The most distinguished of 
those who stayed was Gustavus Hesselius, who was born in Sweden 
in 1682, came to America in 1711, painted mostly in Maryland and 
Pennsylvania and died in 1755. His Last Supper, ordered in 1721 
for St. Barnabas Church, Queen Anne’s Parish, Maryland, was 
probably the first devotional picture made for any church in the 
British Colonies. As a portraitist he was better trained than the 
run of the contemporary face painters, but his was a very slender 
native talent. He left a son who was a PCa of slightly better 
ability. 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 9 


en 


9 From the painting Bishop Berkeley and His Family in the Yale School of the Fine Arts, New Haven, Conn. 


JOHN SMIBERT 


JouN SMIseERT is the first connecting link between the feeble painting of the American colonies and the main 
current of European art. Hence he is important beyond his personal accomplishment. Born at Edinburgh 
in 1684, and trained at Sir James Thornhill’s Academy, London, Smibert studied for three years in Italy, 
accompanied Dean Berkeley to America in 1729, settled in 
Boston and died there in 1751. Though an uneven painter, 
Smibert was the first well-trained artist to make America his 
home. His competent practice, as shown in the picture repro- 
duced, and his copies of old masters, inspired young Copley 
and generally helped to improve the rude methods of our 
colonial face painters. Indeed the portrait of the Berkeley 
family, representing a Britishfamily of the highest character , 
and culture, has a unique value as a record, even if it has not 
a very high place as art. 


ROBERT FEKE 


Tue gradual improvement of face painting is illustrated by 
Robert Feke, who had a resolute grasp of character and a less 
rigid style than his predecessors. He seems to have moved 
between the two chief cities of the Colonies, Boston and 
Philadelphia. Oyster Bay, Long Island, was his birthplace, 
the year, 1705. There is a record of him at Newport in 1729, 
and he married there in 1742. His latest dated portrait is 
of 1746, the latest trace of him is in Philadelphia, 1750. 
He is said to have died soon thereafter in Barbadoes. A self- 
trained man, Feke achieved a vigorous and characterful por- 
traiture which perhaps influenced the youthful Copley, and 
in any case has won Feke the posthumous compliment of 
having his work often mistaken for Copley’s. 


10 From the portrait of Brigadier-general Samuel Waldo 


in the Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, 
Maine 


10 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


11 From the portrait of Miss Elizabeth Rothmaler, 
in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York 


JEREMIAH THEUS 


CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, was the only considerable city in 
the South in Colonial times and developed a very interesting local 
culture. In publishing, in the theater, and in painting, it kept 
close relations with Europe. Accordingly, it was easy for the well- 
trained Swiss portrait painter, Jeremiah Theiis, to find a welcome 
there. He landed in 1740 and painted with success until his death 
in 1774. This admirably vivacious and characterful portrait of 
a Huguenot belle shows Theiis at his best and explains why many 
of his pictures have passed for Copley’s. It is signed, and 
dated 1757. 


JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY, F.S.A., R.A. 


Tue first American painter of the eighteenth century who gained 
even a modest standing in the general history of art is John Single- 
ton Copley. His preéminence among his American contemporaries 
depends on no 
innovation or 


change of outlook, but rather upon an enhancement of 
the methods of the ordinary face painters, resting 
fundamentally upon his far more acute and tenacious 
observation. There is something in his work that we 
have already seen in the unknown painter of Mrs. 
Freake. Copley was born in Boston in 1737. He began 
to paint very young, receiving slight instruction from 
his stepfather, the engraver Peter Pelham, and from 
Smibert. Copley painted with exemplary firmness and 
character many notables of colonial New England. 
Being a Loyalist, on the brink of the Revolution he 
moved to London. There he flourished as a portrait and 
historical painter (F.S.A., 1777, R.A., 1783), mollifying 
his style under the influence of the English school, but 
hardly improving his art. He died in London in 1815, 
full of honors. (See also No. 47.) 


From a Self-portrait in the New York Historical Society 


COPLEY’S PORTRAIT OF EPES SARGENT, Snr. 


THE massive sincerity of Copley is well exemplified by this 
powerful effigy of a prominent officer and magistrate of the old 
Commonwealth. It was probably painted before 1760, and for 
a man in the early twenties is an extraordinary performance. 
Copley’s more facile successor, Gilbert Stuart, once remarked 
generously that Copley knew “more than all of us put together.” 
Indeed it seems that a greater urbanity of style would have 
made such a portrait both less characterful and less dis- 
tinguished. Copley is one of three preéminent American 
intellectuals born in New England. The other two were 
Benjamin Franklin, author, publicist and the greatest Ameri- 
can scientist of the eighteenth century, and Jonathan Edwards, 
the most important American theologian and philosopher of 


13 From the portrait of Epes Sargent, Sr., in the possession : 
of Mrs. G. W. Clements, New York. © Curtis & Cameron his day. 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 11 


A NEW ENGLAND PORTRAIT, 
MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


NatTurRALy the severity of Copley’s style lent 
itself best to the portraiture of old age. It 
would be hard to imagine anything more 
physically and morally imposing than his 
Mrs. Seymour Fort. A portrait like this is both 
an enduring monument to the gentility of New 
England in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
as well as to the character, at once formidable 
and kindly, of the sitter. With its searching 
study of textiles and details, it has no smallness 
of execution, and as sheer character it would live 
comfortably amid the best portraits of the 
greatest masters. One sees that Copley ap- 
proached the painting of textures with more 
curiosity than love, and yet the very tenacious- 
ness of the method gives the costume a character 
entirely appropriate to its wearer. Much of the 
value of Copley’s art lies in the fact that he 
resolutely declined to prettify or flatter the 
stern and powerful visages of his colonial sitters. 
There never was a more truth-telling painter. 


14 From the portrait of Mrs. Seymour Fortin the Wadsworth Atheneum, 
Hartford, Conn. 


THE BOY WITH THE SQUIRREL 


Despite the austerity of his manner, Copley 
left a number of engaging portraits of young 
men and women which have a charm of their 
own, if inferior to the contemporary master- 
pieces of English painting in this branch. 
Indeed it was a portrait of a boy with a 
squirrel that brought Copley his early 
recognition in England. This attractive por- 
trait of the artist’s half-brother, Henry Pel- 
ham, was sent to Benjamin West at London, 
probably in 1760, and through his influence 
was exhibited anonymously in the London 
Society of Arts. Of this portrait West re- 
marked that it had a “delicious colour 
worthy of Titian himself.’ Copley contin- 
ued to exhibit at the London Society with 
increasing fame and in 1766 was admitted 
F.S.A., a great honor for a colonial painter 
not yet thirty years old. Indeed such gen- 
erous recognition made very natural his flight 
to London when the imminence of the War 
of Independence both troubled his loyalty 
and threatened his prosperity. So to our 
great loss, Copley’s colonial chapter closed. 


15 From the portrait of Henry Pelham (The Boy with the Squirrel), owned by Frederic 
Amory, Boston, in Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 
in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, No. 71, 1914 


XII—2 


12 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 
COPLEY’S PASTEL PORTRAITS 


A Few pastel portraits offer again a 
pleasing exception to the general 
austerity of Copley as a portrait 
painter. He used this softer medium 
appropriately for the sweet faces of 
certain colonial young women who 
sat for him. Of these pastels none is 
more ingratiating than this likeness of 
the young colonial matron who as 
Mary Storer was twenty-eight years 
old when this delicious chalk drawing 
was signed in 1765. The charm and 
lightness of the work suggest that 
Copley-in his usual manner was not so 
much anxious to paint rigidly as to 
give a true account of persons in whose 
character and appearance rigidity 
ruled. In London Copley’s style soon 
took on urbanity. But he seems lessin- 
terested in his English sitters, who, as 
compared with his American patrons, 
lacked idiosyncracy. Copley’s gallery 
of colonial worthies is invaluable to 
the historian and most interesting to 
the art lover. One must regret those 
honorable scruples of conscience that 
made him an exile, depriving us of his 
portraiture in their youth of those 
Revolutionary heroes whom Stuart 
was happily to depict in their maturity. 


et 


16 From the pastel portrait of Mary Storer oe in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
New York 


BENJAMIN WEST, R.A., P.R.A. 


Ir Copley’s preéminence in the eighteenth century is 
certain, Benjamin West was highly important both as a 
teacher and as the first American painter to gain Euro- 
pean prestige. Like many a later American artist, he 
made his entire career abroad. He was born of Quaker 
parents near Springfield, Pennsylvania, in 1738, and died 
in London in 1820. Beginning as a face painter in 
Philadelphia and New York, he studied in Italy from 
1760 to 1763, producing there remarkable historical 
canvases, which won him international fame. He settled 
in London where he painted, with success, mythology, 
history and portraits. From 1792 to his death, West 
served as president of the Royal Academy. Although 
West belongs to the English school, he retained his 
American sympathies, and as mentor of young American 
painters studying in London was a strong influence on 
our school. Among many less notable painters, he 
helped to instruct Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull 
and Gilbert Stuart. He was a sterling portraitist, as 


this likeness of his pupil and fellow-painter shows. (See 


AQ 17. +=‘¥From the portrait, ca. 1768, of Charles Willson Peale in the 
also Nos. 48-9.) New York Historical Society 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 13 


fied: ee & 


painting The American School in the Metr 


MATTHEW PRATT 


THE nineteen years between Copley’s escape in 1775 and Gilbert Stuart’s return in 1794 are on the whole 
lean years for American portraiture. We must be grateful, however, to that obscure pupil of Benjamin West, 
Matthew Pratt, who has left us a picture of the kindly master with his disciples about him. Matthew Pratt 
was born in Philadelphia in 1734, where he died in 1805. He studied in England from 1764 to 1768 and 
again in 1770. He acquired a somewhat better technique 
than was usual among our early face painters and left a 
number of creditable portraits and miniatures. In- 
cidentally, he painted signboards which were “well colored 
and well composed.” In this picture West is correcting a 
drawing held by Pratt. 


MSE 


18 From the 


ses 


sca Bas) es A 
opolitan Museum of Art, New York 


ABRAHAM DELANOY, JR. 


A more gifted pupil of West was Abraham Delanoy, Jr. 
He brought back something of the urbanity of the great 
English portraitists. Delanoy was in West’s studio in 
1766 and died in New York about 1786. We have little 
other information about him. Though this vivid portrait 
shows that he had no common talent, neglect was his 
portion. He was forced to eke out painting by selling 
groceries and died in poverty. It is clear that the tradition 
of rigidly literal face painting died hard. It needed the 
genius of a Gilbert Stuart to displace it. This portrait of 
West in his late twenties and already famous must have 


been painted in London in 1766. 19 From the portrait oy Ete resp eh in the New York 


14 


21 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


20 From the painting Peale Family Group in the New York Historical Society 


CHARLES WILLSON PEALE 


Stitt another pupil of West, Charles Willson Peale, did much to fill the gap between Copley and Stuart. 
Peale saw the light in St. Paul’s Parish, Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, in 1741 and studied with Copley 
at Boston and West at London and became an excellent portrait painter. His sitters comprise the most 
prominent Americans of the Revolutionary and early Republican period. As a captain of volunteers in 
Washington’s army he had seen some of these great figures near at hand and in action. We owe to him, as 
in the frontispiece to Volume VI, our knowledge of the appearance of Washington in his prime. (See 
also Vol. VIII.) Immediately after the war, Peale founded a Museum of Natural History in Philadelphia 
in 1784, the first of its sort in America. He was also one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of 
the Fine Arts, in 1805. He died in Philadelphia in 1827, leaving sons and grandsons bearing such sug- 


ote ” 


From the portrait of Master William Carpenter in the 
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass. 


gestive names as Rembrandt, Raphael and Titian to con- 
tinue his art. His portrait by West appears as No. 17 
of this volume. 


RALPH EARL 


Tue last pupil of West who now concerns us is Ralph Earl, 
painter and patriot. He was born in Leicester, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1751 and probably came under the influence of 
Copley. He fought in the battle of Lexington and promptly 
made four rude topographical paintings of its episodes which 
in Amos Doolittle’s engravings passed about the colonies 
and heightened the Revolutionary feeling. But Earl was 
primarily a portraitist, and exceptional in seeking something 
of the broader decorative effects of the English school. His 
powers were, however, below his ambition. The straight- 
forward naiveté of this presentment of a well-bred colonial 
lad, painted in 1779, is an uncommonly pleasing phase of a 
generally feeble painter who, after studying with West 
in London, 1783-86, adopted the mannerisms of the current 
English school without really attaining its elegance. How- 
ever, the whiff of Romney in certain portraits of Earl’s is 
by no means unwelcome at a moment when anything like 
elegance in our painting was rare. Earl died at Bolton, 
Connecticut, in 1801. 


COLONIAL PORTRAITURE 15 


22 From the painting The Gordon Family in the possession of Mrs. John B. Brooke, Reading, Pa. 


HENRY BENBRIDGE 
OF course, Gilbert Stuart dominates our early Republican painting and marks the advance of our practice 
toward a professionalism fairly comparable to that of contemporary England. But before considering 
Stuart, we should glance at the work of two painters who foreshadow the impending improvement. Henry 
Benbridge in the family group which we reproduce fairly competes with the great English painters and with a 
measure of success. Benbridge was born at Philadelphia in 1744. As a pupil of those highly considered 


masters Battoni and Mengs at Rome and of West at Lon- 
don, he was the best-trained American painter of his time. 
He returned to Philadelphia in 1770 and thereafter worked 
chiefly at Charleston, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Vir- 
ginia, dying in his native city in 1812. As an uncommonly 
good technician for his time and place, Benbridge deserves 
more consideration than has been his lot. 


JAMES SHARPLES 


Even the itinerant face painters began to show a greater 
skill toward the end of the century. Such is the case with 
James Sharples, who was born in Lancashire, England, 
about 1751, and, after slight studies with George Romney, 
came to America about 1793. He traveled widely in the 
East in search of patronage, often in a horse-drawn van of 
his own invention. He knocked off his small pastel 
portraits in about two hours, charging fifteen dollars for 
the profile and twenty for the full face. This portrait 
suggests very well the finesse of the great financier without 
conveying his strength, which is better expressed in the 
standard portrait by Trumbull. Sharples died in New 
York in 1811. 


6 


2 x 
we 


23 From the pastel portrait_of Alexander Hamilton in the 
New York Historical Society 


CHAPTER II 


‘EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE 


leading of Benjamin West at London, assimilated the English practice, which 

was itself, at some remove, the florid manner of Rubens. This chapter of our 
art attains brilliancy only at the beginning and end, respectively in Gilbert Stuart and 
Thomas Sully, but it is throughout creditable. Almost without exception, these painters 
understood well their double task of securing a likeness, while making a canvas that 
would look handsome on the wall. They were painting for a better-trained public. 
After the two wars with England, it was customary for prosperous Americans to travel 
in Europe. They brought back many copies of the old masters, and even a few collections 
of old pictures were formed in Charleston, South Carolina, Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
New York, Boston and Newport. Voluntary associations for the promotion of litera- 
ture and art begin to provide modest galleries and limited facilities for current exhibi- 
tion. The Redwood Library at Newport, founded in 1747, may be the pioneer. The 
Charleston Museum dates from 1773; the Boston Athenzeum, as an exhibiting body, 
from 1826; the Pennsylvania Academy, from 1805; the Maryland Institute, from 1824. 
Meanwhile, the primacy in art was passing from the older centers of American culture — 
Boston, Charleston and Philadelphia — to the new commercial metropolis, New York. 
There a short-lived Academy of the Fine Arts was incorporated in 1808 under John 
Trumbull’s auspices. It was superseded in 1826 by the National Academy of Design, 
the first American art society under professional control. The Art Union, founded in 
1838 as the Apollo Association, was both an exhibiting and purchasing society, and in 
its Bulletin published the first American periodical solely devoted to art. Soon the dealer 
begins to appear. -In the early “forties Goupil of Paris started a branch at New York, 
and hard upon his heels the Diisseldorf Gallery afforded, with constant exhibitions of the 
popular new sentimentalisms from the Rhine, an appropriate meeting place for young 
spooners of zsthetic bent. It was a generation that cared for art, and naturally it got 
better art than its predecessor. 

With Gilbert Stuart our early Republican portraiture begins gloriously. He had 
passed more than twenty years of his prime in London where little that was excellent 
in portrait painting could have escaped his shrewd eye. But his style was his own. His 
flesh tints were composed of little strokes of slightly varied color. This produced great 
liveliness of surface, and a sense of glow from within; and the little touches were not 
merely factors in richness and luminosity, but also traits in character. He never settled 
into a formula, but duly discriminated differences of complexion, age, station and even 
health. A genial person, if im a crusty way, he had the knack of putting the sitter at 
his ease and of eliciting the best aspect. Generally a realist, he composed that majestic 
portrait of Washington that has become standard. Within his self-elected limitations as 
a face painter, he rarely did anything besides heads and busts; he was easily one of the 
greatest figures in a great age of portraiture, combining audacity of attack with pene- 
trating insight and most patient research. 

Stuart befriended and taught many of the younger men, but he was too capricious 
for a master, and his delicate methods were incommunicable. John Trumbull was his 


16 


\ the Revolutionary War, American portraiture, generally under the 


EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE 17 


best contemporary, when at his own best. He too had studied long at London and must 
have consulted intelligently such direct and candid painters as Beechey and Raeburn. 
But Trumbull was a vain and techy person, often below his best, and his art declined 
sadly as old age and complacency overtook him. The average practice is better repre- 
sented by such men as Jarvis, Harding, Inman and Waldo. Many painters of this 
generation traveled widely in search of patronage, painting the more prosperous heads 
of entire villages for twenty-five dollars each. Such work precluded study and reflec- 
tion and required expeditious formulas. So, for all sitters there was one palette and one 
procedure. But both were of a sound traditional sort, and although our ancestors and 
ancestresses between 1800 and the Civil War glow with a suspiciously uniform ruddiness, 
their painted effigies have at least the merit of looking much better on the wall than 
much more conscientiously studied portraits of later date. Of all this portraiture the 
_ late Samuel Isham truly remarked that “it has more likeness than character.” 

It was perhaps a pity, though inevitable, that our standard portraiture drew so much 
upon the rather slippery English practice and less upon the more austere and profes- 
sional methods of France. At all events when one finds a masterly portrait of this period, 
not a Stuart, one is generally reminded of David and his Parisian contemporaries. Early 
in the century John Vanderlyn painted a few portraits at Paris of such excellence as to 
make his swift decline fairly tragic. At the same moment Rembrandt Peale painted his 
solid and masterly heads of David and Lafayette, work to make the brown sauce and 
slovenly drawing of his later portraits simply pitiful. And Morse, some twenty years 
later, did those amazing half-lengths of Mr. and Mrs. David de Forest, now the jewels 
of the Yale School of the Fine Arts (Nos. 40, 41), in which the robust structure of David 
is combined with brilliancy of color and execution that recalls or perhaps anticipates 
Isabey. On the whole, such triumphs were exceptional and were never followed up. 

The period ends, as it began, gloriously with the urbane and accomplished portrai- 
ture of Thomas Sully. He had fully assimilated the decorative and florid English style, 
and at his best is no whit inferior to its greatest contemporary practitioner, Sir Thomas 
Lawrence. He was one of the few Early Republican painters whose pictures had no provin- 
cial look. Being in London, it was natural that he should be permitted to do young Queen 
Victoria in her coronation robes. No living Englishman could have done it as well. Sully 
had only a mediocre gift for character, and too often succumbed to the taste of the Book- 
of-Beauty era, but he had a sure sense for composition and for his own sort of delicately 
florid color. Such full length portraits of young women in landscape as his Mrs. John 
Ridgely and Mrs. Reverdy Johnson would hang comfortably beside the Reynoldses 
and Gainsboroughs at Hertford House, and serve to reassure us that American aristoc- 
racy did not perish with the dictatorship of Andrew Jackson. 

These are unique achievements, in our early portraiture, and if the art is not the 
most serious, its graciousness is entirely disarming. Sully lived on, somewhat neglected, 
in Philadelphia, till 1872, sadly witnessing the new confusion of practice. He had the 
satisfaction of closing a great tradition, worthily, for his pictorial line went back through 
the English and Rubens to Titian himself. 

Of our early Republican portraiture as a whole, it must be admitted that as art it is 
sprightly and respectable rather than thrilling. On the other hand, it was no slight con- 
tribution to the national tradition to fix credibly on the canvas the men and women of 
Jefferson’s generation, of Webster’s and of Calhoun’s. We at least know how our states- 
men, men of letters, warriors and explorers looked, from Stuart’s beginnings to Sully’s 
old age; in later times we are in much worse case. Our portrait record of Lincoln’s gen- 
eration, and Grant’s, and Cleveland’s and Roosevelt’s, is far less convincing than that 
which was left by those old face painters who, without the slightest pretensions to genius, 
exercised with probity a fine and necessary trade. 


18 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


24 From the portrait of General Knox in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


THE ATHENZUM PORTRAIT 
OF WASHINGTON 


Tue fame of Stuart’s portraits of 
Washington has unduly, if naturally, 
obscured his merits as a portraitist at 
large. This unfinished portrait of 
Washington, painted in 1796, has be- 
come one of the most celebrated pic- 
tures in the world. Stuart kept it in 
his studio as the basis of scores of 
replicas. It seems rather a deliberate 
attempt to depict the statesman than 
to suggest the private man. For some 
reason, posterity has accepted it as the 
most satisfactory likeness of the Father 
of his Country, and perhaps it is the 
tragic nobility of this portrait that has 
given it this favor over others which 
are certainly more resemblant. We 
have here a Washington who has en- 
dured political vilification, but is still 
strong in his own rectitude. This por- 
trait appears in the form of an engray- 
ing upon our most commonly used 
postage stamp. It has tended to con- 
ceal a very passionate personality and 
has almost removed its subject from 
the category of human beings. It is 
owned by the Boston Atheneum, al- 
though for many years it has been 
loaned to the Museum of Fine Arts. 25 


From the portrait of George Washington in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


GILBERT STUART, N. A. (hon.) 


GILBERT STUART was not only the ablest American 
portrait painter of his day, but has hardly been sur- 
passed in America since. He was born in North Kings- 
town township, Rhode Island, in 1755, began painting 
very young and at twenty, after transient lessons 
from Cosmo Alexander, was living in something like 
vagabondage in London. During three years of 
struggle he attained a certain recognition, and when, 
in 1777, he tardily found his way to Benjamin. West’s 
studio, he profited rather by the master’s great social 
influence than by his instruction. After nearly 
twenty years of a success always qualified by his 
careless and spendthrift habits, Stuart returned to 
America, in 1794, to begin his extraordinary gallery 
of fair women and strong men. Among these there 
is no more spirited portrait than this of General Knox, 
formerly Washington’s chief of artillery, and, at the 
time of the painting, his Secretary of War. The 
brilliancy and vigor of Stuart are here at their best. 
Posterity owes to Stuart much of its impressions of the 
men who founded the United States of America. 


EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE 


From the portrait of George Washington in the possession of Thomas B. Clarke, New York 


THE “VAUGHAN” PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON BY STUART 


In this portrait, painted in 1795, Stuart has caught the massive benignity of the country gentleman rather 
than the official majesty of the general and statesman. This is the Washington who was an indefatigable 
organizer of hunts and balls, and very gallant to much younger ladies. Of the many portraits made of Wash- 
‘ington in old age this is the most attractive and probably the most like the man. It is called the “ Vaughan 
type,” from its first owner, and exists in some dozen versions. 


20 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 
STUART’S MRS. PEREZ MORTON 


SruaRT was an admirable painter of women with 
a candid love of their physical bloom that allies 
him to Raeburn. In this phase he did nothing 
better than the unfinished head of Mrs. Perez 
Morton. It reminds us that Stuart’s subtlety in 
finishing his portraits disguises the brilliant 
audacity of his attack. Fortunately, we have a 
few of his underpaintings of which this sketch 
of Mrs. Morton is incomparably the finest. 
Among his contemporaries none but Goya could 
have approached it, and it is doubtful if even he 
ever equaled its supremely free and telling 
quality. Stuart painted much at New York and 
Philadelphia, but finally settled at Boston. There 
he was a genial and testy figure, much visited by 
the younger painters upon whom he bestowed 
much good advice and more entertaining anec- 
dotage. Fortunately one of them, William Dun- 
lap, preserved much of the latter in his book, 
which becomes better as it ages. Stuart died in 
1828. How he looked in his benign and active 
old age we know from the faithful portrait by 
his pupil, John Neagle (No. 46). 


TEI 


Perez Morton in the Worcester Art Museum, 
Worcester, Mass. 


27 + From the portrait of Mrs. 


JOHN VANDERLYN 


Tuoueu the American school of painting grew out of English 
precedent, it was ultimately to pass under French influence. 
This course is forecast by two early Republican painters, 
John Vanderlyn and S. F. B. Morse, who early in the nine- 
teenth century renounced their English training in favor of 
the Empire style of France. A little later the cabinet maker, 
Duncan Phyfe, made the same transition. Indeed the dom- 
ination of the Empire style was occasional over our paint- 
ing, but absolute over our arts and crafts. Born at Kingston, 
New York, in 1776, John Vanderlyn worked transiently with 
Stuart, but was permanently influenced by his seven years’ 
stay in Paris in the early 1800’s. He received many honors 
at the French Salons, chiefly for a historical painting that 
now seems frigid enough (see his Marius, No. 391). At 
his rare best Vanderlyn was one of the most accomplished 
American portrait painters of his day, but his ambitious at- 
tempts at the historic style were unsuccessful, and in his 
later years he devoted himself to the making of panoramas. 
This fine portrait was made in Paris under the influence of 


. 3 4 4 ae a 28 Frim the portrait of Sampson V. 8. Wilder in th 
Jacques Louis David and shows an intelligent assimilation land Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, courtesy of Mrs eae 


: d Wilder Hai 
of what was soon to be called the Empire style. Vander- bis’ sas? 


lyn died in New York, a disappointed man, having been refused the decoration of the Capitol, in 1852. Van- 
derlyn’s active life fell in one of the most eventful periods in the development of the American people, a time 
crowded with vigorous and interesting personalities; Jefferson the statesman, Andrew Jackson the soldier 
and determined President, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, both of Vanderlyn’s own state, 
Edwin Forrest the actor, Webster, Calhoun and Clay. He lived in stirring times but failed to record them as 
a Stuart or a Trumbull might have done. (See also No. 52.) 


EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE 21 


WILLIAM DUNLAP, 
N.A. 


Our knowledge of co- 
lonial and early Repub- 
lican painting is mostly 
due to William Dunlap, 
“the American Vasari,” 
who, like his Italian pred- 
ecessor, was as delightful 
a writer as he was an in- 
different painter. Dunlap 
was born at Perth Amboy, 
New Jersey, in 1766. He 
began painting portraits 
at seventeen, studied with 
West at London, and in- 
termittently practiced the 
historical style. Failing 
of success as a painter, he 
maintained himself as a 
man of letters, in history, 
biography and playwrit- 
ing. He is best remem- 
bered by his invaluable 
book, A H istory of the Rise 29 ae the painting The Artist Showing his First Picture to his Parents in the New York 

and Progress of the Arts cri cher pisces 

of Design in the United States, 1834. Secretary of the short-lived American Academy of Fine Arts, and one 
of the original members, in 1826, of the National Academy of Design, he held an honored place in New York 
when he died there in 1839. 


JOHN TRUMBULL 


Brest known as a historical and military painter, 
John Trumbull was also a sterling portraitist in the 
florid English tradition. Trumbull represents late 
eighteenth-century Connecticut at its best. He was 
born in 1756 in the village of Lebanon, perched, 
liked so many of its neighbors, on, a rounded hill- 
top. The people of the region were mostly a sub- 
stantial yeomanry who sent men like Israel Putnam 
and Nathan Hale to the War of Independence. As 
a young man he was an officer in the Continental 
Army, but resigned his commission on a grievance 
— he was a great man for grievances — and studied 
with West in London: Quickly winning repute as a 
historical and portrait painter, he was president from 
1808 of the American Academy of Fine Arts. Trum- 
bull was a contentious and disappointed person, but 
a fine painter when at his best, as in this portrait of 
1804, which is a capital example of his resolute and 
manly vein. He died in New York in 1843, an un- 
happy figure for the unpopularity which his vanity 
and inordinate ambitions had aroused. A collection 
of miniature portraits in the Yale School of the Fine 
Arts represents him at his best, constituting an ex- 
traordinary gallery of celebrities (No. 36), including 


< From the portrait of Robert Benson in the New York 4 : 
Vg 4 Historical Society Indian chiefs. 


22 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WASHINGTON ALLSTON, N.A. (hon.) 


In contrast with Trumbull, Washington Allston was almost 
too much the gentle citizen of the world to become the 
great painter that he ardently aspired to be. Born at 
Waccamaw, South Carolina, in 1779, he made good 
studies with West in London, continuing his training 
independently at Paris and Rome. As a figure painter 
and portraitist he developed rapidly. An elevated spirit 
striving for those ideals of a grand historie style which 
were advocated by Sir Joshua Reynolds and practiced by 
West, Allston’s powers were unequal to his ambitious 
endeavor, but he set an example of high seriousness to his 
generation. Poet and essayist as well as painter, he 
represented in a signal fashion the ideal of artistic culture, 
and was much missed when he died at Cambridgeport, 
Massachusetts, in 1843. He was the first American 
painter who drew widely upon the old masters, a pre- 
cursor of such more fulfilled talents as John La Farge’s. 


31 From the self-portrait in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


CHESTER HARDING, N.A. (hon.) 


TuE roving face painters gradually disappear at this time. 
One of the best was Chester Harding, who was born at 
Conway, Massachusetts, in 1792. Harding graduated from 
sign painting to itinerant face painting. Wandering widely 
through the then frontier states, he commended himself to 
his clients not only by a competent gift for portraiture but 
also by a ready wit and convivial habit. This portrait of 
the eccentric and waspish Virginia politician is full of char- 
acter, and well represents Harding’s direct and lucid vein. 
He gradually won a degree of celebrity and prosperity, and 
death overtook him, finally settled at Boston, in 1866. 


32 From the portrait of John Randolph of Roanoke in 
the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. 


JOHN WESLEY JARVIS 


Or similar type was John Wesley Jarvis who was born at 
South Shields on Tyne, England, in 1780 and died in New York, 
in 1834. Some early impressions of the graciousness of English 
portraiture remained with him, and, except Stuart and Morse, 
none of his rivals painted women so charmingly. Jarvis came 
to America in 1805. Largely self-taught but befriended by the 
able miniaturist Malbone, he made miniatures on glass and 
paper, and, after unusual anatomical studies, became an ex- 
cellent portrait painter. He must have had positive charm, 
for he eloped with a fair sitter of better social standing. A wit 

=) and boon companion, he traveled widely in America, finally 
33 From the clea WE raed ES the New York dying in p overty. 


EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE 23 


EDWARD GREENE MALBONE 


Cop.ey did a few excellent small portraits in oil and so did 
Trumbull, but the art of miniature painting in water colors on 
ivory did not flourish until the early years of the nineteenth 
century. It immediately gained distinction through the work 
of Edward Greene Malbone. He was born at Newport, Rhode 
Island, in 1777 and studied with Allston at Charleston, South 
Carolina, and at London after 1801. Because of his health 
Malbone sought his patronage chiefly at Charleston, but made 
occasional visits to all the seaboard cities. He gave promise 
of excelling on the larger scale in portraiture and figure paint- 
ing (see his own portrait at the Corcoran Gallery, and The 
Hours at the Providence Athenzeum) when his career was ter- 
minated by an early death, at Savannah, Georgia, in 1807. 
Malbone is the only American whose miniatures bear com- 
parison with the best of England and France. 


34 From a self-portrait (miniature on ivory) in the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, courtesy 
of R. T. H. Halsey 


CHARLES FRASER 


A wor Tuy rival and successor of Malbone at Charles- 
ton was Charles Fraser. He was born at Charleston, 
South Carolina, in 1782 and spent all his life there, 
dying in 1860. Fraser was trained as a lawyer but 
soon turned his attention to painting, with Malbone 
and Allston as his masters. One of the most prolific 
miniaturists of early Republican times — more than 
three hundred portraits by him are recorded — he 
was also one of the best, seeking always character 
and avoiding conventional prettiness. 


i 


35 From the miniature onivory of William Petigru in the possession 
of Herbert L. Pratt, New York 


JOHN TRUMBULL 


To aid his work as historical painter of the Revolution Trumbull 
made an extraordinary gallery of small portraits in oil, some 
three score, which are now preserved at Yale University. They 
include every sort of celebrity, not omitting Indian chiefs, are 
frankly painted, and afford an invaluable resource for the 
student of our beginnings as a nation. The intrepid and testy 
patriot that was John Adams is here admirably represented. 
Trumbull, as Dunlap remarked, had a way of spoiling his 
pictures by repainting, and is at his best in such sketches as this. 35 yrom the miniature oll portrait of President John 

Adams in the Yale School of the Fine Arts, New Haven, 


(See also Nos. 30, 51.) Conn. 


24 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


JAMES PEALE 


ENncouraGED by his brother, Charles Willson Peale, James 
Peale became an able and successful portraitist in miniature, 
active chiefly in Philadelphia. He was born at Annapolis, 
Maryland, in 1749 and died in Philadelphia in 1831. Like 
most miniature painters, James Peale tended to sacrifice char- 
acter to prettiness, a failing that the ladies of a century ago 
found tolerable. In the case of Mrs. James Wilson he was 
free from that temptation, and he did justice to her master- 
ful and finely bred character. She was born Mary Stewart, 
the daughter of Colonel Charles Stewart, who was one of Wash- 
ington’s military 
family. One may 
imagine with what 
dignity she pre- 
sided over her home 
at Lansdowne,New /@ 
Jersey. y 


37 From the miniature on ivory of Mrs. James Wilson 
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, cour- 
tesy of R. T. H. Halsey 


ANNA CLAYPOOLE PEALE 


JameEs Peale’s daughter, Anna, carried down his type of art to 
the last quarter of the nineteenth century. She was born at 
Philadelphia, in 1791, and died there in 1878. She was a com- 
petent miniaturist, tending, however, to follow the taste of her 
time in the direction of mere prettiness. There is a fragile grace 
about her miniatures of women and she also painted women well 
on a larger scale. Mrs. Andrew Jackson, at fifty-two, did not 
fully engage Anna Peale’s peculiar talent, but before dismisssing — 

Mrs. Jackson as uninteresting, it is well to remember that her a4 ce pecan ea Lontones Beritnes ene 
fiery husband once fought a duel in defense of her name. 


! 


REMBRANDT PEALE, N.A. 


OF the Peale dynasty Rembrandt was the most able and famous. 
Like Vanderlyn (No. 28) and S. F. B. Morse (Nos. 40, 41), 
he drew his style rather from France than England. He was 
born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1778 and made his 
first studies in painting with his father, Charles Willson Peale, 
going later to West in London. But his real development came 
after student days through contact with the stern French 
portraitist J. L. David. Portrait and historical painter and 
lithographer (No. 405), Peale was competent in all these 
branches. A sturdy but rarely a fine portraitist, recipient of 
honors in Paris and Rome, he naturally aspired to the glories of 
the grand style, and none too successfully. Peale wrote a book 
of travel, compiled a selection of artists’ opinions, and wrote 
poems. He was one of the original fifteen N.A.’s, carrying the 
title for a matter of thirty-five years until his death in Philadel- 
phia in 1860. This portrait of Lafayette is an excellent example 
YO” From “ihe ‘Uorieelh! Sie cae eae Reena of the characterful severity of Rembrandt Peale’s French 

Metropol ta i UaeGE ie ore manner, as is that of his friend, the painter J. L. David, in the 
Pennsylvania Academy. These are both of Peale’s early time. Later he capitulated to the florid English 
manner, which, practicing without conviction, he practiced rather badly. (See Nos. 53, 405.) 


25 


EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE 


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26 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ASHER BROWN DURAND, N.A., 
P.N.A. 


As our best line engraver and one of the 
founders of our native landscape school, 
Asher B. Durand is perhaps the most 
important early Republican painter after 
Stuart. Durand was born at Springfield, 
New Jersey, in 1796. His teacher in 
engraving was Peter Maverick, and he 
soon led our school. From about 1830 
he abandoned engraving for portraiture 
and landscape. His chief importance is 
in landscape, but he painted a few 
portraits of extraordinary power. This 
of President Madison yields in vividness 
to no portrait of its time. Under its 
austerity one senses the wisdom of the 
man who played so active a part in the 
convention that framed the Constitution, 
and his suffering when, as President, 
unable to master circumstances, he saw 
the Union on the verge of disintegration 
in the tragic War of 1812. Durand was 
a founder of the National Academy, 
in 1826; and its president from 1845 to 
1861. Death terminated his dignified 
old age at South Orange in 1886. He is 


42 From the portrait of President James Madison in the Century Association, New York the high ty pe of the self-taught painter. 


SAMUEL LOVETT WALDO, A.N.A. 


SucH an even performance in portraiture as 
that of Samuel Waldo — really a commercial 
face maker — speaks strikingly for the general 
high level of the early Republican portraiture. 
We can show nothing comparable to-day, the 
gulf between good and average portraiture 
being very wide. Born at Windham, Gonnecti- 
cut, in 1783, Waldo died at New York in 1861. 
He was a competent but never inspired por- 
traitist who enjoyed popularity with the solid 
citizens of New York in the forty years before 
the Civil War. His success required the 
taking on of a partner, William Jewett, who 
often painted the costumes and accessories. 
This characterful portrait of an old Connecti- 
cut magistrate was done about 1816. The 
contrast with the far more subtle and search- 
ing Durand is instructive. Waldo worked 
in the days when the sea trade was bringing 
prosperity to many a family in southern New 
England and New York. Before the days of 
the photograph the family portrait was as 
inevitable among well-to-do folk as the family 


album of the latter part of the century. 


43 From the portrait of Joseph Moss White in the possession of Mrs. Adrian 
Van Sinderen, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn 


EARLY REPUBLICAN PORTRAITURE Q7 


44 From the portrait of Mrs. Reverdy Johnson in the possession of Mrs. Alfred Hodder, 
> Princeton, N. J. 


THOMAS SULLY, N.A. (hon.) 


Most early Republican portraiture is too much concerned with likeness to care also for decorative effect. 
The distinction of Thomas Sully is precisely that he strove for and often attained that decorative urbanity 
which we admire in the portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Sully was born in England in 1783. Taken to 
Charleston, South Carolina, at nine years old, he became successively the pupil of the miniaturists, Fraser 
and Belzons, and of Henry Benbridge (No. 22). He studied in England in 1809, and painted there in 
1837-38 a coronation portrait of Queen Victoria for St. George’s Society of Philadelphia. He was casually 
instructed by Stuart and worked for a time in New York with Jarvis as a partner. After bitter struggles, 
Sully settled in Philadelphia, where he achieved fame. At times a too fluent painter, he was an excellent 
colorist, with a grace and charm very rare at the time. Certainly no American painter had achieved up to 
this time a full-length portrait so decoratively accomplished, and so aristocratic in mood, as that of Mrs. 
Reverdy Johnson. Sully lived on till 1872, when he died at Philadelphia. He had seen his gracious work 
pass wholly out of fashion, as the old aristocracy yielded to the new plutocracy. 
xII—3 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


28 


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EARLY HISTORICAL PAINTING 


Renaissance, reached America largely through the example and direct teaching 

of Benjamin West. West in his youth happened on a copy of Dufresnoy’s Art 
of Painting, a book wherein the academic theories of selection, nobility and subservience 
to the antique had been codified for all Europe. West, after an adventurous and fairly 
legendary early training in Pennsylvania, was sent by a patron to Italy, at twenty-two, 
in 1760, with the surprising result that an American Quaker was to become one of the 
most prolific inventors of mildly amorous mythologies and mildly sensuous nudities 
that a century fecund in such academic wares was to produce. With amazing facility, 
West, at Rome, assimilated and even somewhat revitalized the rather stale classicism 
of Pompeo Battoni and Raphael Mengs. West’s huge Agrippina Bearing the Ashes of 
Britannicus, painted in 1763, was justly the sensation of London, for no classical picture 
of equal merit had then been produced by an artist of English race. A few years after 
West settled in London, Sir Joshua Reynolds, as president of the new Royal Academy, 
began those famous Discourses on the Art of Painting, in which the grand style, which 
Sir Joshua was ever too wise to practice himself, was most eloquently and persuasively 
preached to his students. West did the practicing: The Bible, the ancient poets, con- 
temporary history, engrossed his brush. The pictures, despite their tinge of insipidity, 
still have a pleasing “‘period”’ look, and they delighted their public. West grew rich as 
well as famous, refused a knighthood, and, when Sir Joshua died, seemed and was the 
inevitable P. R. A. A Quaker and professedly a pacifist, he was unmolested during the 
Revolutionary War and was most serviceable in those stormy days to such American 
painters as John Trumbull and Gilbert Stuart whom chance or choice had taken to 
England. West’s studio was ever full of his own big canvases, which passed for the 
masterpieces of the times, and with fine originals by the great Italian painters which 
are still reckoned as masterpieces. A benign, wise and friendly man, West opened his 
studio to all American students of art. Refusing formal instruction, he gave good advice 
and brought his youngsters before finer pictures than they had ever dreamed of. Natur- 
ally, disciples were seldom lacking to such a master. Charles Willson Peale came before 
the Revolution; during the Revolution, Trumbull and Stuart; later, Pratt, Dunlap, 
Allston, Morse and many others. : 

The positive contribution of West was to bring American painting into the European 
and, in part, into the English tradition. He is the link between the excellent florid por- 
traiture of our early Republican period and the great eighteenth-century Englishman 
and their exemplars, Van Dyck and Rubens. Unhappily, West and his followers ignored 
the better example of Hogarth, in which they merely followed contemporary English 
taste. 


[oe dogma of the grand or historical style, which comes down from the Italian 


29 


30 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


The fact that West had made a good living and grown famous on the grand style 
was an irresistible incentive to the more ambitious young American painters to go and 
do likewise. Here his influence was of more doubtful good, and here begins a rather 
sad chapter of dashed hopes. Only Gilbert Stuart wholly escaped the infection of the 
grand style. Trumbull began with gigantic Bible stories, before he found his true field 
in portraiture and vivid little battle-pieces. Dunlap staked his fame on a Calvary, now 
forgotten, and lives by his lives of his fellow-artists. Only Washington Allston, who had 
independent means, made a moderate success of the historic style. His able pupil, 
Morse, in disgust at neglect, gave up historical painting for the invention and exploitation 
of the telegraph. 

Thus we early meet the tragedy of the American artist trained abroad, in the fact that 
on his return he wants to paint a kind of picture which is not wanted at home. And 
indeed there was little chance for the grand style in America in the early years of the 
nineteenth century. There were, to be sure, a few new Academies and Athenzeums that 
virtuously, but very rarely, bought such things. The only evident way to make money 
on these big pictures was to pass them from theater to theater, charging an entrance 
fee. That was a speculative resource at best, and here one met the formidable competi- 
tion of foreign painters in the same vein. Pictures in the historic style could, however, 
be engraved on a royalty basis. Trumbull did well this way with The Declaration of 
Independence (Vol. VIII, No. 235) and his Revolutionary battle-pieces. Indeed, the last 
survival of the historic style is in yellowed steel engravings of Joseph Ames’ Death of 
Webster, or of Trumbull’s The Declaration of Independence, or Healy’s Webster's Reply 
to Hayne (Vol. VIII, No. 549) on the walls of our remote farmhouses. Generally the 
quest of the historic style ended in bitterness. Vanderlyn, who had astonished Napo- 
leonic Paris with his Marius (No. 391) and had achieved at home a notable success of 
esteem with his Ariadne (No. 52), ended as the disgruntled maker and proprietor of a 
panorama. 

Generally this is the story — talents declining or uncongenially employed. But there 
is at least a modest cheer in the afterglow of Emanuel Leutze and Daniel Huntington, 
who carry the tradition beyond the Civil War. Leutze, from his robust patriotism and 
the novelty of his Diisseldorf technique, Huntington with his sure appeal to piety, sen- 
timentality and loyalty, at least made good livings, despite, or perhaps because of, the 
respective brutality and feebleness of their styles. In general, American history succeeded 
pretty well, and any other sort very ill. The results were in either case almost negligible 
as regards art, though such pictures as Trumbull’s The Declaration of Independence, 
and Morse’s The Old House of Representatives (No. 54) are, simply on the technical 
side, among the ablest interiors of the period anywhere. Which suggests that in the 
whole movement it was opportunity rather than talent that was lacking. And before 
dismissing the apparently futile and certainly untimely quest of the grand style as a 
mere aberration, we should at least consider its effect upon American culture generally. 
Many an American saw his Raphael better from acquaintance with West’s mythologies 
and Bible subjects, and the relative weakness of Allston at least led his admirers, and 
they abounded, toward Michelangelo and Titian. In this sense we may comfort our- 
selves with the faith that so much high-minded endeavor was not wholly in vain, but 
really fruitful in ways which the apparent losers could not foresee. 


JOHN SINGLETON 
COPLEY, F.S.A., R.A. 


In his latter years in 
London Copley turned 
his sturdy talent to great 
pictures of contemporary 
history and, despite a 
certain heaviness and lack 
of decorative ability, made 
himself the best English 
master in this branch. 
His success in historical 
painting, together with 
West’s, encouraged a 
generation of ambitious 
young Americans to fol- 
low a quite impossible 
ideal. There is at least 
dignity and force in this 
picture of the death of the 
Great Commoner, of 
which, rather than the 
big version at the Na- 
tional Gallery, London, 


EARLY HISTORICAL PAINTING 31 


47 From the artist’s sketch for the painting The Death of Chatham, photograph by courtesy of the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


we produce the small and equally fine sketch done for the original. Of course, this phase of Copley really 
belongs to English painting. (See also Nos. 12-16). 


BENJAMIN WEST, R.A., F.R.A. 


As much may be said of that more famous champion of the grand style, Benjamin West, but since his influence 
was potent on many American disciples he cannot be omitted in this connection. Benjamin West, already 
widely practiced in mythology and biblical and modern history, sketched this picture about 1801, and 
exhibited it at Paris. Later he enlarged it to a gigantic scale, destining it for his native land. It was his 
most ambitious effort, but its sensationalism has repelled posterity as much as it attracted his contemporaries. 


(See also No. 17.) 


48 From the painting Death on the Pale Horse in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. © Detroit Publishing Co. 


$2 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WEST’S 
MYTHOLOGIES 


WEST was a more agree- 
able painter in mythology 
than in the severer side 
of contemporary history 
and biblical legend. At 
best, however, he is a 
feeble draftsman and 
a perfunctory composer. 
Probably his Quaker up- 
bringing closed to him the 
pagan gusto which his 
pagan »themes required. 
The rather flaccid grace 
of such mythologies as 
the Venus and Adonis 
delighted the taste of the 
time, which was not 
robust, and was a leading 
influence on our more 
intellectual painters. 
Americans were willing 
to imitate the form but 
not the spirit of pagan- 


49 From the painting Venus Lamenting the Death of Adonis in the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa. ism. 


WASHINGTON ALLSTON, N.A. (hon.) 
Unver West’s teaching, Washington Allston 
(No. 31) devoted himself whole-heartedly to 
the grand style. In such single figures as 
the Archangel Uriel at Boston his accent is 
noble, and there is idyllic charm in his Bible 
stories. When he attempts the sublime, as 
in the present canvas, the strain on a gentle 
talent is painfully evident. Unlike West, 
who held to approved English methods, 
Allston endeavored to form a style by direct 
study of the old masters of Venice. It was 
an intelligent endeavor, but, because of the 
artist’s hesitating temperament, it ended only 
in confusion. He was somewhat indolent, 
and he was only half-trained for a task re- 
quiring the completest technical resources. 
One may admit, however, that the evidently 
noble ideals of Allston exerted an influence 
which was denied to his quite feeble paint- 
ing. Contemporaneous with this work of 
West and Allston was the revival among 
architects of interest in pure classical forms — 
Jefferson’s Monticello, the University of Vir- 
ginia, and the buildings at the national 
Capitol in the classical style. Quite natu- 


rally the painters went back to mythology [am 


50 From the painting The Prophet Jeremiah Dictating to the Scribe Baruch in the 
and the grand sty le. Yale School of the Fine Arts, New Haven, Conn. 


EARLY HISTORICAL PAINTING | 33 


51 From the painting The Battle of Bunker Hill in the Trumbull Collection, Yale School of the Fine Arts, 
New Haven, Conn. 


JOHN TRUMBULL 


Tue history of the nation would seem the most legitimate theme of the historical painter. Under the false 
zsthetic of the neo-classic schools it was regarded as a permissible branch, but as inferior as compared with 
mythology or ancient history. Accordingly, John Trumbull’s spirited little pictures of the Revolutionary 
War, though widely popular, were regarded as inferior to the frigid mythologies of West and Allston. Trumbull, 
remembering his service in the Revolutionary War, fixed his impressions of it in brilliant little battle pictures 
owned by the Yale School of the Fine Arts. Earlier he had undertaken big Bible subjects, but he seems to 
have realized his unfitness for the task. He had qualities of color and vivacity denied to many of his rivals. 
He fell off in old age, and the large battle pieces which he did later are much inferior to the early pictures. 
(See also Nos. 30, 36.) 


JOHN VANDERLYN 


THE painting of mythology had made a place for the lightly draped figure, but when the actual nude ap- 
peared in John Vanderlyn’s Ariadne there was an uproar. This picture, exhibited at Paris in 1812, and 
popularized in 1835 through A. B. Durand’s 
excellent engraving (No. 390), is of historical 
importance because it broke the way through 
bitter controversy to the free use of the nude 
in art in America. To-day it hardly seems 
notable amid the countless conscientious 
nudes its success made possible. It has an 
ease and largeness of design which were 
unusual at its moment, and amply justified 
its champions. The age to which Ariadne was 
introduced accepted without thought an in- 
ferior status for women. Her duties were 
largely domestic and social. Her mind was 
fed with peculiarly insipid, sentimental 
novels and moral essays. Prudery was there- 
fore inevitable and extreme. Vanderlyn’s 
whole career seems to have been against the 
American grain, and he is the typical example I velit lll 

of the frustrated exponent of the grand style. 5? "rom the painting Ariadne tn ty geben 


ie 
f the Fine Arts, 


34 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


53 From an engraving of the painting The Court of Death in the Detroit Institute of Arts 


REMBRANDT PEALE, N.A. 


Ir our early Republican painters were unsuccessful in mythology and ancient history, they were rather 
worse in allegory and symbolism, which required a still greater force of invention. It is pathetic to think of a 
sturdy, objective talent such as Rembrandt Peale’s meditating for years on a canyas of The Court of Death. 
However, he never knew his failure. Aside from his standard (composite) portrait of Washington, Rembrandt 
Peale’s chief asset, as it was his most ambitious work, was this great canvas. It was profitably exhibited for 
an admission fee throughout the country, and it appealed strongly to that sense for the false sublime which 
was at once the bane of the academic school and of the cultured taste of the early years of the last century. 
(See also Nos. 39, 405.) 


SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE, N.A., P.N.A. 


Contemporary history has after all the advantage over ancient history that the painter can actually see it. 
Thus Trumbull and S. F. B. Morse are far more alive to-day than their more ambitious and archeological con- 
temporaries. Morse, who was able in every branch of painting, has left a historical masterpiece in his finely 
seen picture of The Old House of Representatives. Morse has invested this interior with a dignity worthy of a 
nation’s legislature in its 
prime, and merely on the 
technical side has man- 
aged with breadth and 
delicacy the placing and 
character of the small 
portraits and the effect 
of early candlelight. The 
whole thing is a fine echo 
of the historical painting 
of the French Empire. 
Morse finished the picture 
in 1823. In the same year 
congressmen assembled 
in this hall to listen to 
the reading of a message 
from President Monroe 
containing the doctrine 
which bears his name. 
(See also Nos. 40, 41, 476.) 


54 From the painting The Old House of Representatives in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. 


EARLY HISTORICAL PAINTING 


“ata oe 


55. From the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


es 


EMANUEL LEUTZE, N.A. 
Tue fervent but somewhat raw expression of the patriotism of the new Americans speaks eloquently in the 
great canvases which Emanuel Leutze devoted to American history. He was born at Gmiind, Germany, 
in 1816, and was brought at an early age to America. Trained under Lessing at Diisseldorf, he devoted him- 
self to large historical pictures, generally on early American themes. The Landing of the Norsemen, Columbus 
before Ferdinand and Isabella, Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way, the latter in the Capitol at Wash- 


ington, were some of the best. The most famous is the illustration shown. 


fine spirit, Leutze did much to naturalize 
in America the facile technique and ready 
emotionalism of the Diisseldorf school. He 
enjoyed a great popularity, and died at Wash- 
ington in 1868. (See also No. 477.) 


DANIEL HUNTINGTON, N.A., P.N-A. 
Tue thin idealistic vein of Allston was con- 
tinued by Daniel Huntington almost to our 
own time. He was born at New York in 
1816 and died there in 1906. S. F. B. Morse, 
Inman and Ferrero, at Rome, were his 
teachers, although it may be suspected 
that he drew more from _ ill-assimilated 
observation of Correggio at his worst. 
Portraitist, historical and genre painter of a 
slender and sentimental talent, he delighted 
his contemporaries and his compositions were 
multiplied by the engravers. He is our 
Delaroche, saving the moribund grand style 
by discreet injections of the adrenal fluid of 
anecdotage and pathos. A worthy and popular 
gentleman, he became an N.A. in 1840 and 
served as president from 1862 to 1870 and 
1877 to 1890, thus sponsoring the Academy’s 
highest prosperity and its deepest decline. 
He had a marked influence in confirming the 
general Victorian sentimentality of the years 
immediately preceding and following the Civil 
War. (See No. 100.) — 


aba sabi voniitllina 
56 From the painting Mercy’s Dream in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
New York 


35 


An energetic rather than a 


36 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM PAGE, N.A., P.N.A. 


WituiAM Packs is the first American painter who 
evinces a real gift for imaginative design. He 
was born in 1811, at Albany, New York, and 
worked with Morse and in the National Academy 
School. Portraitist and figure painter of rare 
distinction of feeling, he was of uncertain and ever 
experimental technique. Page was long resident 
in Rome and Florence where his dignity of char- 
acter won him the finest friendships, such as that 
of the Brownings. Personally he was everywhere 
an inspiring influence. George Inness, for ex- 
ample, owed to him that conversion to religious 
mysticism which shaped his later landscapes. In 
spite of notable gifts of imagination, Page re- 
mains a rather vague figure in our art. He had 
the soul of a great painter, but not the hand 
and eye. He died at his country home on Long 
Island in 1885. A certain largeness and nobility 
of design in this picture of Ceres allies it to the 
contemporary masterpieces of George Frederick 
Watts. Page’s working years coincided with the 
fading of the classical and the Greek revivals 
in American architecture. His Roman memories 
kept alive in him a classical spirit when the authority of the classic was passing away. (See also No. 97.) 


? ee S ee ee 
57 From the painting Ceres in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


HENRY PETERS GRAY, N.A., P.N.A. 


Tuat mythological vein which had exceeded 
the powers of West was revived under better 
technical auspices by Henry Peters Gray. 
He was a New Yorker, born there in 1819 and 
dying there in 1877. For a time he worked 
with Huntington, but chiefly trained himself 
by study of the old Venetian painters. A 
respectable but not thrilling interpreter of 
mythological and historical themes, he is 
chiefly interesting as the last American ad- 
herent to the dogma of the grand style. In 
portraiture he was perhaps more able than he 
was in mythology. The faint flavor of Euro- 
pean urbanity in his art may be regarded as 
at least a civilizing influence at a time when 
the new industrialism was rapidly destroying 
all traditional standards. On the other hand 
his mythologies are too reminiscent. The 
present picture is literally patched together 
from several themes of Titian. The last 
years of Gray’s life saw the rapid rise of the 
modern corporation. The industrial giant was 
appearing, oftentimes in a réle not unlike that 
of the robber-baron of the Middle Ages. It 


was a transition period in American life and 


standards of all kinds were changing. 58 From the painting The rapes Lu bier an the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 


CHAPTER IV 


GENRE PAINTING BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 


AINTING of scenes from common life is of late appearance in America. The 
interest which our forefathers felt in themselves was not extended to their social 
and business relations. Apparently they were too busy doing, to observe them- 

selves in action. Even the early illustrators, barring a few political cartoonists, avoided 
genre at a moment when England and France were leaving the fullest and ablest records 
of their everyday affairs. Genre painting actually begins among us about the moment 
when Paulding and Irving, of Salmagundi and The Sketch Book in the second decade of the 
nineteenth century, with John Dennie of the Port Folio at Philadelphia, began to give a 
gently satirical attention to our society. The pioneer genre painter is probably John Lewis 
Krimmel, born in Germany, who came to Philadelphia in 1810. There, without much 
encouragement, he gave himself to painting little anecdotes and crowds in public places. 
He was drowned at an early age and had no opportunity to broaden his very minute 
style. Henry Sargent of Boston, some ten years later, painted the two big pictures, The Din- 
ner Party and The Tea Party (No. 60), in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. These are so 
excellent in dignity and in pleasing notation of interior illumination that one regrets that, 
engrossed with historical themes, Sargent so seldom essayed the contemporary vein. In 
John Leslie, born of American parents in London in 1793, America produced the talent 
that promised an admirable record of her familiar affairs, but he followed his star to London 
before he was twenty, became the admitted master of literary and historical anecdote, 
adorned the well housebroken form that romanticism assumed in English painting of the 
*thirties and died an R. A. Henry Inman, most versatile of our early painters, occasion- 
ally turned his attention to genre, but without much real insight, and in such a picture as 
his Mumble the Peg (No. 61) attained popularity. John Gadsby Chapman, in the ’thirties, 
working mostly in Italy, introduced the costumed peasant to America, and Robert W. Weir, 
about the same time, varied historical painting with themes from Cooper and Scott, and 
with such excellent familiar subjects as the Boat Club. 

Among other genre painters of standing in the fifties were Tompkins H. Matteson, 
nicknamed from his favorite historic themes, “Pilgrim”? Matteson, who also painted the 
Spirit of Seventy-siz, a widely known picture; and Richard Caton Woodville, who died 
prematurely in 1855, having first immortalized that then peculiarly American institution, 
the barroom; and created humorously attractive and excellently painted anecdotes such 
as Waiting for the Stage and The Sailor's Wedding. 

Such is the short and homely record of our early genre painting; except for William 
Mount it left no permanent trace. The glories of the style were not in painting at all 
but in the copious and always excellent illustration of F. O. C. Darley. Mount, had 
he been prolific, would have been our Jan Steen. As it was, he became an admirable 
recorder of our rustic life. From his too few canvases, beautifully drawn and excellent 
in color — he must have studied the little Dutch masters most lovingly — one could well 
visualize the dramatis persone of Lowell’s Biglow Papers and of Mrs. Stowe’s Oldtown 
Folks.. From every appearance he should have been the pioneer of an American school 
of genre painting, but Mount, though personally successful, remained an isolated figure. 
He probably has not yet had the measure of appreciation he deserves. 

37 


38 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


JOHN LEWIS 
KRIMMEL 


Tue spectacle of our 
everyday life, which long 
failed to interest native 
Americans, naturally cap- 
tured, if only for its 
novelty, an intelligent and 
observant foreigner. We 
owe our earliest painting 
of the celebration of our 
greatest national holiday 
to the Wiirttemberger, 
J. L. Krimmel, who was 
born in Ebingen, Ger- 
many, in 1787, came very 
young to Philadelphia in 
1810, and died there after 
a short ten years’ activity 
in 1821. In spite of a dry 
and minute manner, 
Krimmel shows excellent 
gifts of observation in this 
picture. Had he been spared for a long activity, our visual record of the good old times would be much 
more accurate and complete. 


59 From the painting Fourth of July in Centre Square in the Pennsylvania 
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 


HENRY SARGENT 
Henry SARGENT of Massachusetts was fitted 
to have done with a far better painter’s gift 
the work of social record that Krimmel only 
began. But by the bad luck that attended 
all our early genre painting, Sargent was only 
casually a painter. However, the few pic- 
tures he has left of aristocratic society at its 
amusements are uniquely precious. He was 
born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1770, 
and died at Boston in 1845. Chiefly self- 
trained, he had the aid of West and Copley 
in London in 1793. His duties as an army 
officer much interfered with his painting, 
and although he painted creditably portraits, 
historical, religious and genre pictures, he 
may be regarded as a gifted amateur. It 
seems as if in some indirect way Sargent 
must have come in contact with the French 
Empire school, his vision being more lucid 
and precise than that of the English painters. 
His big canvases, The Tea Party and The 
Dinner Party, are charming in observation 
and extraordinarily sensitive for the time in 
the registration of interior light. Such a 
picture recalls the proud aristocracy of the 
New England Federalists in the days when 
the sea trade was the foundation of their 


prosperity ~ 60 From the painting The Tea Party in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


GENRE PAINTING BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 39 


HENRY INMAN, N.A. ee oe 
Henry InMAN was the first American artist to win & ? ae 
popularity for genre painting. His pictures, in- G : oo 
vested with facile humor or pathos, were engraved fe 
and widely distributed. If his success was a 
rather cheap one, at least it cleared the way for 
such more serious talents as William Mount and 
Eastman Johnson. Born at Utica, New York, in 
1801, Inman worked with Jarvis at New York, 
and later studied lithography. He was a versatile 
artist who preferred landscape painting, but made 
his living by portraiture and illustration, oc- 
casionally producing genre and historical pictures. 
During a stay in England he was associated with 
Wordsworth and other literary celebrities and 
painted their portraits. One of the original 
N.A.’s in 1826, he died at New York in 1846. 
His pictures, like the present one, are rather well 
painted but very cheaply seen. As a technician 
he was more accomplished than most of his con- 
temporaries. (See also No. 475.) 


JOHN QUIDOR 


Historica genre was generally left to the illus- 61 From the painting Mumble the Peg in the Pennsylvania Academy of 
trators, but we find one quite personal figure in cl dere does = oy 

this branch in John Quidor. The humors of Washington Irving’s burlesque history attracted him, and he led 
himself the pothouse life which enabled him to grasp one side of Knickerbocker character. He was born in 
Gloucester County, New Jersey, in 1800. He studied transiently with Jarvis and Inman, but from necessity 
devoted himself chiefly to commercial painting. His few rather large paintings on subjects from Washington 
Irving show excellent humor and fair skill, while they are interesting as being the only American pictures 
which emulate the Rabelaisian vein of Thomas Rowlandson. Quidor had been forgotten for many years 
before he died at New York in 1881. 


be So og De anes Br 2 ‘ ; : ee aN ee eek, 
62 From the painting Peter Stuyvesant Watching the Festivities on the Battery in the possession of the estate of W. E. D. Stokes, New York 


40 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM SIDNEY 
‘ MOUNT, N.A. 


With William S. Mount 
we reach the first Ameri- 
can genre painter who has 
claims upon our remem- 
brance for purely artistic 
reasons. Born at Setau- 
ket, Long Island, in 1807, 
he became a pupil of the 
-N.A. schools, but got his 
true direction from the op- 
portune advice of Allston 
that he study such Dutch 
genre painters as Ostade 
and Teniers. This Mount 
did, and he employed 
their low, lustrous tones 
most effectively in such 


is a pictures as Turning the 
63 From the painting Bargaining for a Horse in the New York Historical Society Grind. stone, The Truant 


Gamblers, Bargaining for a Horse, Raffling for a Goose, The Power of Music, etc. A fine observation and a 
capital humor enliven his few but quite masterly pictures. In Mount’s time the everyday life of the rural 
folk of America had a charm and picturesqueness which resulted from isolation and highly developed in- 
dividualism. Mount was a pioneer in his discovery of the common people. His pictures were contemporan- 
eous with other early representations of American types—Sam Slick, the itinerant clockmaker from Slickville, 
Connecticut, and Solon Shingle, a popular stage depiction of the Yankee. 


THE POETRY OF HOMELY LIFE PORTRAYED 

JamEs RussELL LowE.i’s Hosea Biglow would have recognized a kindred spirit in William S. Mount, so keenly 
humorous and sympathetic is his observation of the daily incidents of rural life. He is never more charm- 
ingly at his ease than in 
the well-known picture 
The Power of Music. It 
has a quality at once hu- 
morous and poetical, and 
its execution is as mellow 
as that of Mount’s be- 
loved Dutch exemplars. 
Mount’s too few pictures 
were generally engraved 
and justly popular. They 
doubtless had their share 
in turning attention to 
the picturesqueness of our 
rural life and thus take 
their place with The Big- 
low Papers and the charm- 
ing rustic novels of Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe. Mount 
died in his native village, 
in 1868. Of his contempo- 
raries only Morse equaled 
him in painter-like 
quality. 


64 From the painting The Power of Music in the Century Association, New York 


CHAPTER V 


LANDSCAPE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 


UST as our traditional and English-inspired portraiture began to decline, landscape, 
which was to be most distinctively our native art, sprang into being. Earlier Ameri- 
cans, though they cared enough for foreign landscapes to buy them, hardly con- 
sidered their own soil zsthetically. The land was still a something to be conquered 

rather than to be observed and loved. Even the topographical illustration of famous 
places comes late, in the prints (No. 401) after Alvan Fisher (1792-1863) and W. G. Wall 
(1792-1864?). For the new landscape painting there was considerable literary prep- 
aration. Wordsworth’s poems were as well read in America as in England. Irving and 
Cooper had enthusiastically celebrated the spell of our vast solitary spaces. Bryant had 
added to such meditative admiration a sense of religious mystery. Whittier, as early 
as 1831, published The Legends of New England and through his long life remained a 
poetical celebrant of its scenery. Of artistic preparation for landscape there was little 
save in the humble efforts of the coach and sign painters. 

Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) of Philadelphia is the real pioneer. From the eighteen 
twenties he painted the historic sites of the Schuylkill and the Hudson with a modest 
charm, employing with skill the brown tonalities of his times. There is little research 
in his pictures, which rest on accepted formulas, but they have a nice, intimate feeling 
and often an unexpected luminosity. But the landscape that was to thrill new America 
was to be of a more novel and ambitious sort. It was provided by Thomas Cole (1801-48), 
who laid the broad foundations of a really native landscape art. 

Cole’s first impressions were of Ohio, then the frontier, and certain of his idyllic land- 
scapes may show traces of its pleasantly broken scenery. But the poet-painter in him 
was first aroused at the sight of our eastern mountains, and he made himself the first 
interpreter of the forest-clad peaks, cloves and ravines of the Catskills and White Moun- 
tains. Entirely self-taught, he had from nature the essentials of a fine sense of composition 
and a reverent mood. His larger canvases conveyed a melancholy grandeur; his smaller 
sketches, an idyllic charm. Thus he became the accredited interpreter of our forest and 
mountain scenery, a powerful influence on the national taste, as Irving and Cooper and 
Bryant had similarly been in the field of letters. Never a good colorist, he made himself 
nevertheless a vigorous and telling painter. At thirty, he went to Europe and in the 
sixteen remaining years after his return made unhappy experiments in symbolism and 
allegory. One likes to imagine what Cole might have achieved could he have seen, before 
his habits were formed, good landscapes by the old masters and by such contemporaries 
as Turner, Constable, and Corot. It might have bewildered him; it might have brought 
out the latent great master in him. He was an elevated spirit, a musician, a reader of 
Milton, Dante, and Wordsworth, a valued companion of the best American writers of 

41 


42 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


his day. In the twenty-five short years of his career he fully did his work of making our 
country classic to ourselves. He is the true father of all our succeeding poets in landscape 
from Homer D. Martin to Arthur B. Davies. ‘Thus any sense of frustration in Cole’s 
work vanishes in the light of that larger accomplishment celebrated by the poet Bryant 
in his memorial address. Bryant evokes an America: | 
“delighted at the opportunity of contemplating pictures which carried the eye 
to a scene of wild grandeur peculiar to our country, over our aerial mountain tops, 
with their mighty growth of forest never touched by the axe, along the banks of 
streams never deformed by culture, and into the depths of skies bright with the 
hues of our own climate, such as few but Cole could paint, and through the trans- 
parent abysses of which it seemed that you might send an arrow out of sight.” 


If Cole supplied the poetry of early American landscape, Durand furnished its comple- 
mentary prose. About 1830, Asher B. Durand, already famous as an engraver and 
portraitist, turned chiefly to landscape. He brought to the new task the old microscopic 
eye of an engraver, spent himself in minute notations of the textures of bark, grass, rocks — 
thus frittering away in details the broad masses of local color. So, though his subjects 
are often those of Cole, he lacks Cole’s grandeur and unity. The tenacity of his patient 
observation excites admiration without giving much pleasure. Occasionally a big picture, 
like the Kaaterskill Clove, at the Century Club, has scale and solemnity, and his smaller 
landscape sketches generally have a quiet charm and even a considerable luminosity. 
At least the example of his rectitude worked beneficially upon artists like Kensett and 
Inness who were born in better times and favored with more adequate technical resources. 

Save Inness, the successors of Cole and Durand did little to improve on their ex- 
emplars. However, the dual tradition, which was completely harmonious with the taste 
of the time, flourished, and landscape in the hands of the grandiose painters, Albert 
Bierstadt, Frederic E. Church, Thomas Moran; in: the Hudson River and Adirondack 
themes of Cropsey and McEntee; in the facile scenics of Kensett; in the brilliant begin- 
nings of Homer Martin and Inness; in the minute yet robust mountain subjects of David 
Johnson; in the pleasing ruralism of the Harts and James Smillie; in the more vigorous 
transcripts of Sonntag, became the characteristic form of American painting. 

From Cole’s predilection for the Catskills and residence on the Hudson, the whole 
school was dubbed at first proudly, latterly in condescending deprecation, ‘“ The Hudson 
River School.” It deserves neither extreme of attitude. If it grew in an age of technical 
innocence, it also brought American taste to the support of art. The “Black Walnut 
Era” at New York, from 1859 to 1876, was in many respects a golden age of patronage. 
With complete like-mindedness between artist and public, the artist was a welcome 
personage in drawing-room and club, enjoying such moral and financial support as he 
has never since had. The social and economic reasons which, with the advent of a better 
practice, caused the present lack of understanding between artist and public must later 
occupy us. ; 

Meanwhile we have merely to note a gradual improvement in the technique of land- 
scape before 1876, which was due to European influence. To a discerning eye everything 
about 1865 indicated the prompt advent of the really great landscape school which was 
to rise under vastly better esthetic, and far more discouraging social auspices. 


LANDSCAPE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 43 


65 From the painting On the Susquehanna in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. 


* © Detroit Publishing Co. 


THOMAS DOUGHTY, N.A. (hon.) 


Our landscape begins with love of cultivated scenery. This is the note of the early designers for the print 
makers (No. 401). It was cultivated effectively in large painting by Thomas Doughty. He was born at 
Philadelphia in 1793, and after an uncongenial experience in manufacturing, turned to landscape painting in 
his early thirties. Virtually without instruction he developed a quietly harmonious and even luminous 
manner in the brown tones then prevalent, applying it to suburban and rural scenes near Philadelphia and 
New York. His gentle spirit was finally embittered and clouded through poverty and neglect. He died at 
New York in 1856. (See also No. 474.) 


THOMAS COLE, N.A. 


Tue real father of American landscape was Thomas Cole, a profoundly religious and poetical nature who 


found solace and inspira- 
tion in untamed nature. 
He was born at Bolton-le- 
Moors, England, in 1801, 
studied with an itinerant 
face painter in Ohio and 
worked through struggle 
and poverty to the posi- 
tion of first landscape 
painter of America. Cole 
painted with adoration 
the wild scenery of the 
Catskills and the White 
Mountains and, though 
without richness of color, 
well realized the scale and 
solemnity of his themes. 
As a very young man he 
was asked to be one of 
the founders of the Na- 
tional Academy. 
xII—4 


66 From the painting Conway Peak in the New York Historical Society 


Ad THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


COLE’S ALLEGORIES 


ArTer a European trip 
Cole’s style broadened, 
and his handling grew 
richer. In his later years 
he was too much drawn 
into allegory, and failed, 
save in so far as he ex- 
pressed himself through 
idealized landscape. The 
present is the last of a 
series of five pictures on 
“The Course of Empire.” 
It is full of Cole’s fine 
melancholy, as are many 
similar pieces, for ex- 
ample An Arcadian Land- 
— | scape, at Indianapolis, and 

The Return, in the Cor- 
coran Gallery. He died near Catskill, New York, in 1848, and the poet Bryant pronounced his memorial 


address. As the first American painter who realized the grave poetry in our native landscape, as the spiritual 
ancestor of Homer Martin and George Inness, Cole is one of our most important early painters. Engravings 
of his pictures stimulated the taste for ideal landscape throughout the country. In Desolation may be easily 
seen the influence of the study of the classics so important at the time. The Roman ruins that were being 
reéxamined for their art are used to represent the vanished empire. 


67 From the painting Desolation in the New York Historical Society 


68 From the painting Lake George in the New York Historical Society 


ASHER BROWN DURAND, N. A., P.N. A. 


Ir was the prose rather than the poetry of nature that led Asher B. Durand (No. 390) to lay down the burin 
and take up the brush. He was forty when he turned to portraiture and landscape painting. His dry and 
minute style, acquired through engraving, was a handicap which he never wholly overcame; he nevertheless 
produced many fine portraits, and in landscape at least set the example of really studying the details of nature 
and of wrestling with the more difficult problems of local color. His strenuous curiosity and positive in- 
genuity in minute record still claim a certain admiration, though they are also a striking warning of the pic- 
torial disadvantages of the microscopic eye. (See also Nos. 42, 382, 386, 476.) 


LANDSCAPE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 45 


JERVIS McENTEE, N.A. 


Coxe and Durand, though obviously of opposed tendencies, are generally bracketed as the founders of the 
Hudson River school. Their immediate successors and young contemporaries deserve relatively little atten- 
tion in a general survey. Jervis McEntee, whose favorite sketching ground was the Adirondacks, inherited 
something of Cole’s fine meditative melancholy. McEntee was born at Rondout, New York, in 1828 and 
died there in 1891. He had studied with the versatile Frederic E. Church, who was a pupil of Cole’s. 
McEntee’s little pictures of forests and mountains and lonely clearings have slight technical skill, but still 
make their appeal through their genuine and poignant feeling. 


REGIS FRANCOIS 
GIGNOUX, N.A. 


WE meet a more profes- 
sional practice for the 
first time in the work of 
the Frenchman Régis 
Gignoux. Born at Lyons, 
France, in 1816, he 
died in Paris in 1882. 
Gignoux, who had been 
an instructor in painting 
at Cherbourg, at Lyons, 
and at the Ecole des 
Beaux-Arts, finally fol- 
lowed a fair American 
girl to America, in 1844, 
married her and devoted 
himself to landscape. Oc- 


casionally he painted 
winter scenes (No. 388), then a novelty, and he transiently taught George Inness. To our naive landscape 


painting he contributed a more professional character. He was the first president of the Brooklyn Art 
Academy. 


cate 


70 From the painting Summer Scene on the Hudson in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


46 


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CHAPTER VI 


OUR HEROIC LANDSCAPE, 1850-1880 


HE beginnings of our Heroic School of landscape correspond closely with Horace 
Greeley’s advice that a young man should go West. So the artist too sought 
grandiose, distant scenes — the Rockies, the Sierras, the Andes. The mark 

of the school is bigness. Such canvases as Bierstadt’s, Church’s, and many of the 
Moran’s are no longer calculated for the modest home, but for public exhibition before 
footlights or under skylights. While these artists sold their pictures well, they chiefly 
made their gains by circuit exhibition, and by copyrights. Ambition, exhibitionism 
were the watchwords. It all represented the elation accompanying a more complete 
survey of the great resources and grandiose scenery of America. The two leading names 
are Albert Bierstadt and F. E. Church, but many others were casually drawn into the 
- movement. 

Naturally this scenic and panoramic ideal did not call for a sensitive technique. Big- 
ness and emphasis were the note. One may say that the steely Diisseldorf manner of 
Bierstadt was ideal for the task. It insisted on the form and local color, neglecting move- 
ment and atmosphere. But it was as yet hardly perceived in America that the movement 
and atmosphere of nature were worth painting, and they were not missed. What Bier- 
stadt gave was the superficial aspect of wonderful scenery which the photograph had not 
yet conveyed. You could see the Rockies and the Sierras for a quarter of a dollar, at a 
moment when it was very expensive and positively dangerous to see them in any other 
way. So people gladly paid their quarters, got a good money’s worth, and the whole 
transaction had only a remote relation to art. The smaller canvases of Bierstadt often 
have a modest charm in the old luminous brown method, and he painted a few characterful 
portraits. Possibly he was a victim of Horace Greeley. Had he been a home-keeping 
body, his place in American landscape would have been undoubtedly smaller, but perhaps 
more permanently habitable. . 

Church was a much better technician and had a finer temperament. He had learned 
much from his master, Cole, and something from study of Turner. In his prospects of the 
great peaks and tropical valleys of Mexico and South America — Heart of the Andes, 
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi (No. 73) — he spares no detail. With the most amazing delicacy, 
whether it be a cloud drifting away from a distant crag, a tangle of vines, an array of 
spiky palms — Church says with clearness just what he wants to say. To the impossible 
subject of Niagara he brings an equal tenacity of observation, and his picture of it is 
perhaps still the best. Church was so right and skillful on all secondary issues, that one 
hesitates to say that, with all the school, he was wrong on the main thing. The scale and 
grandeur of high mountains, and wide plains and valleys cannot be literally represented, 
but must be indicated and suggested by well-chosen symbols for scale and distance, and 
this implies wholesale sacrifice of details. Perugino knew this some centuries before 
Church took up his brush, and the landscape painters of China knew it a’thousand years 
before Perugino. The lack of such knowledge makes the works of our Heroic Landscape 
school more obsolete to-day than the Durands and Coles. One may look at the move- 
ment as a rather fine sort of error with incidental advantages, in smoothing the way for 
greater painters of much smaller landscapes. 

AT 


48 THE PAGEANT OF AMERIC 


cee spas at AE 


an ALBERT BIERSTADT, 
N.A. 

Amone the painters who 
practiced the grandiose type 
of landscape, Albert Bier- 
stadt is easily the most 
prominent. He was born 
at Solingen, Germany, in 
1830, and was brought to 
New Bedford, Massachu- 
setts, as an infant. Study 
at Diisseldorf with Lessing 
and Achenbach, with the 
counsels of his elder fellow 
students Leutze and Whit- 
tredge, gave him the needed 
| technical equipment for his 
ia ee ewe] task as a landscape painter. 
Fee pee In 1863, Bierstadt visited 
the Rocky Mountains and thenceforth applied himself to great composite canvases of that titantic scenery. 
These pictures, painstakingly able in their topographical features, but thin and hard in workmanship, won 
him a fortune. He died in New York City in 1902 long after his vogue had passed. Apparently his success 
was resented by his fellows, for he received no academic honors. His ideals correspond to that era of expan- 
sion and discovery that followed the Civil War. Major J. W. Powell explored the Grand Cajion, and the 
beauties of the Yellowstone and Yosemite were gradually made accessible to the public. 


es ire, : 
- ae 
ac ran : S eo 


72 From the painting Mount Corcoran in the Corcoran Gallery of Art 


{Sk 
, Was 


73 From the painting Cotopazi in the New York Public Library 


FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, N.A. 


Sucu ideals found a more adequate expression in the paintings of Frederic E. Church, who was born at 
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1826 and died in New York City in 1900. Church was a pupil of Thomas Cole, 
and soon branched out for himself as a painter of tropical and ideal landscapes. He filled his vast panoramic 
canvases with the most minutely studied details, yet keeping reasonable breadth of effect. For his times, 
he had a vivid, if ill-controlled, color sense. He gained prosperity and international renown but lacked 
the gift of simplification and selection and therefore failed to be ranked as a great painter. There still 
stands on the Hudson the picturesque Moorish villa which he built amid broad acres as a monument to 
his financial success and contemporary artistic prestige. 


49 


OUR HEROIC LANDSCAPE, 1850-1880 


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CHAPTER VII 


GENRE PAINTING FROM THE CIVIL WAR 
TO 1890 


sk picture of everyday life “with a story” was very freely practiced from the 


late ’sixties to 1890. But with the exception of the resolute narratives of the ~ 

older men, like Eastman Johnson, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins and 
the little Early American idyls of E. L. Henry, there is little that now concerns the art- 
lover. | 

Eastman Johnson, though he was younger and worked into the present century, must 
be here included, for his style developed early and changed little. He infallibly hit a quiet, 
right, often humorous sentiment, and supported it by charming lighting and coloring, 
withal by a free brush-work uncommon in his time. Whether in such single figures as 
Daydreams and Knitting for Soldiers (No. 76) or in groups like Old Kentucky Home (No. 
75) or Corn Husking at Nantucket (Vol. ILI, No. 168), he pursued his tranquil and fruit- 
ful career from the early ’fifties to his death in 1906. 

The Civil War passed leaving no one comparable to Trumbull to celebrate its ce 
Photography supplied the record that painting failed to provide. Yet we get a vivid 
sense of how things looked around the edges of camps from the early pictures of Winslow 
Homer. Trained chiefly in commercial lithography, he went to the war as an artist 
correspondent. His Prisoners from the Front (No. 80), now in the Metropolitan Museum, 
won him recognition and most justly. After the war followed such little canvases as 
The Country School, The Bright Side, and Snapping the Whip (Vol. III, No. 296) — scenes 
in which intensity of vision met a sober emphasis of workmanship that proclaimed the 
coming master. These things have every quality of great genre painting save charm, and 
Homer was quite logically moving toward an art in which charm was to have little place. 
The popular taste was with such badly painted anecdotes as were composed, generally on 
the unvarying theme of the newsboy, by J. G. Brown, gradually shifting to such better 
trained men as Henry L. Mosler. There were creditable military and naval painters, 
as Gilbert Gaul, Rufus Zogbaum and Carlton T. Chapman; John F. Weir and Thomas 
Hovenden occasionally struck a deeper note. The abler men who arrived toward the 
"eighties were often drawn into illustration, as Frederick Remington and William T. 
Smedley, and in the ’nineties into mural painting, as C. Y. Turner and Blashfield. Mean- 
while the abler Americans who sought training in Europe before or about 1870 tended to 
stay there. Thus George H. Boughton made his career in England, F. A. Bridgman, archee- 
ological painter and Orientalist, Edwin Lord Weeks, Orientalist, Ridgway Knight and 
Charles Sprague Pearce, specialists on the French peasant in her overtly picturesque 
aspects, settled and prospered in Paris. Carl Marr became a professor at the Royal 


50 


GENRE PAINTING FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO 1890 51 


Academy, Munich. And indeed it was a discouraging America for an artist to come back 
to. Patronage had passed from an old aristocracy of birth and position to a new plutoc- 
racy whose interest in art was slight and knowledge less. Wealthy folk no longer 
frequented artists’ studios, at least in America. They visited instead the fine New York 
branches of the great English and French art dealers, and made their purchases under 
tutelage. These dealers naturally pushed the work of the Royal Academy and the Salon 
and of American paintings, only such as had the foreign stamp. It was the moment of 
the beginnings of the dealer-made collections of such merchant and railroad magnates 
as A. T. Stewart, William H. Vanderbilt, Henry Walters, with their glittering array of 
Stevenses, Viberts, Fortunys, Bargues, and their less glittering Meissoniers, Tademas, 
and Bouguereaus, their Cabanels and Chaplins and Ribots. Fortunately the same 
dealers were soon to bring over the Millets, Corots, Rousseaus, and Daubignys, but 
there was more than a decade when picture buying was directed along artificial and alien 
lines, and the problem of the artist who wished to keep his Americanism and live was a 
sore one. 

The best critical taste of the ‘eighties favored the brilliant young Americans studying 
in Europe and naturally doing European subjects. And indeed the early narratives of 
Walter Gay, Childe Hassam, Gari Melchers and Walter McEwen still are so ingratiating 
that it is to be regretted considerations of space forbid their reproduction in this book. 
What is strange is that nobody sufficiently realized the greatness of Thomas Eakins in 
genre at a moment when masterpiece followed masterpiece — The Chess Players, Salutat 
(No. 85), William Rush Carving the Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill Rwer (No. 84), the 
rowing pictures. No doubt this neglect rested partly on the error of the times and 
partly on Eakins’ own character. He was never relaxed or sentimental and so failed to 
catch the crowd, whereas persons of taste had been mistaught that the picture with a 
story is a vulgarity. The present is beginning more justly to estimate the intellectual 
concentration of the worthy pupil of those two sternest masters, Géréme and Bonnat. 
The massive and truthful Americanism of Eakins’ work is one of our best legacies from 
a generally too cosmopolitan period. 

As for genre painting, its place was temporarily taken by magazine illustration, and 
when it reappeared, it was under new and largely French auspices, and dealing with a 
far more varied and complicated world than that of Eastman Johnson and Thomas 
Hovenden. 

Evidently the mere hurry and shifting social standards of life after the Civil War 
were unfavorable to that meditative and loving contemplation of common things out of 
which only great genre painting has ever grown. The artists who might have become 
fine creators of genre were generally drawn into magazine illustration, while the new 
sestheticism was decrying all narrative painting as subartistic. It needed some clearing 
of the critical air before a new genre painting could venture to show itself. 


52 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Ee 


75 From the painting Old Kentucky Home in the New York Public Library 


EASTMAN JOHNSON, N.A. 


Tr is fortunate that our most understanding painter of rural life was also our most prolific. Eastman Johnson, 
though lacking the incisiveness of Mount, is so uniformly excellent that to select from his pictures is difficult. 
He was born at Lovell, Maine, in 1824; and began as a self-taught portraitist in crayons. For a time he 
studied at Diisseldorf but really developed his art as a genre painter by private study of the early Dutch 
masters. He was a portraitist and genre painter of high and even merit, with a solid grasp of his themes, 
and one of the best colorists and technicians of his generation of American painters. His complete assimila- 
tion to American uses of a technique learned abroad is in striking contrast to the case of the next generation 
of foreign-trained painters. They brought back with a foreign technique alien ideals. It would have been 
in every way better for our art if the Beaux-Arts men had been able to emulate Eastman Johnson’s placid 
wisdom. (See also No. 101). 


KNITTING FOR SOLDIERS 


Wuite best known for his more 
ambitious subjects, Johnson is often 
exquisite in single figures as in this 
little picture, or in the more famous 
and slightly sentimentalized day- 
dreaming lad in the Museum of the 
University of Michigan. The il- 
lustration is one of several pictures 
that show the reverberation of the 
Civil War. They are perhaps more 
precious than the more direct re- 
cords of the illustrators and minor 
military painters. With a very 
complete life work behind him, 
Eastman Johnson died at New 
York in 1906. 


76 From the painting Knitting for Soldiers in the New York Public Library 


GENRE PAINTING FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO 1890 53 


THOMAS WATERMAN 
WOOD, N.A., P.N.A. 
Tue popular genre painting 
before and after the Civil War 
was that of crowds. It was 
ably practiced by Richard 
Caton Woodville and Thomas 
Waterman Wood. Wood was 
born at Montpelier, Vermont, 
in 1823 and studied with 
Chester Harding. Wood was 
skillful in arranging large 
groups naturally and had a 
quiet good humor that served 
him well in the military and 
rural genres. Such popular 
pictures as The Village Post 
Office and The Sailor's Wed- 
ding are valuable records and 
withal, engaging pictures. The canvas here reproduced is theatrically effective and the various degrees 
_ of confidence and distrust are shrewdly studied. Concentration is lost, as is frequently the case with Wood, 
through casual distribution of light and dark areas. Abounding in racy parts, his pictures were not thought 
through as wholes. There are several examples in Vol. III of this work (Nos. 183, 268, 271, 273, 290). Wood 

presided over the National Academy between 1891 and 1899, and in 1903 died in New York. 


ravure in Sun and Shade, August, 1892, after the painting The Quack Doctor 


77 From a photog 


a 


78 From the painting Allegro and Penseroso in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 


JOHN GEORGE BROWN, N.A. 


Tue highly polished newsboys of John George Brown exactly accorded with the taste of a generation that 
loved highly polished rosewood tables with highly polished marble tops. Brown was born at Durham, Eng- 
land, in 1831 and died in New York in 1913. He began his studies at Newcastle and Edinburgh and com- 
pleted them after 1853 at the National Academy school, New York. His sleek manner and overtly humorous 
episodes of newsboy life and rural manners won him such contemporary popularity that, though his ac- 
complishment was subartistic, he cannot be omitted in any historical survey. 


54 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


GEORGE HENRY BOUGHTON, N.A. 


TuE note of George Henry Boughton is that of refinement and his bent was that of an illustrator. Born in 
1833 in England, he was brought to Albany in childhood and was largely self-taught. Returning to Eng- 
land in 1861, he remained there, making a great name for himself through his precise and demurely 
attractive anecdotes from old-time America and England. It is only by courtesy that Boughton can be 
regarded as an American painter, but since his themes were taken from our history and he gained prestige 
for us in England, it seems right to include him. He died in 1905 in London. 


WINSLOW HOMER, N.A. 


Tue sterling excellence of Winslow Homer in genre painting has been somewhat obscured by his later pre- 
eminence as a marine painter. Born at Boston in 1836, he died at Scarboro, Maine, in 1910. As a youth he 
worked as a commercial lithographer, and later studied at the National Academy school, where he developed 
a real gift as an illustrator. He was a war correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, and after the Civil War con- 
tinued his vein as an illustrator very ably in little genre pictures mostly of rural life. These have much power 
and directness of draw- 
ing but few other in- 
dications of Homer’s 
future greatness. Had 
he stopped with them, 
we should have had 
merely a more rugged 
Eastman Johnson. As 
it is, the tenacity of ob- 
servation in these early 
Homers is the solid 
foundation on which his 
broader style is built. 
Prisoners from the Front 
is a fine study of Civil 
War types, Union and 
Confederate, and valu- 
able as a record. (See 
also Nos. 125-130, 420, 
498, 506. 


we hts basa 


80 From the painting Prisoners from the Front in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


GENRE PAINTING FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO 1890 55 


Nee eres 
2 x aes tame 


81 From the painting Hark, the Lark! in the Layton Art Gallery, Milwaukee 


HOMER IN THE MOOD OF SENTIMENT 


Winstow Homer’s usually rugged style softened just once in the direction of sentiment on a visit to England, 
where he lived at Tynemouth among the fisher folk. This picture was painted in 1887, and is a reminiscence 
of that rarer mood. A very similar water color is dated 1883. From about 1876 he ceased to interest himself 
in the minor humors and sentiments of ordinary living and gave himself almost exclusively to the interpreta- 
tion of the sterner moods of the forest and the ocean. (See Nos. 125-130.) 

To realize his strength and versatility as a genre painter one should consult the files of Harper’s Weekly 
from 1868 to 1876. (See No. 420.) Many of his illustrations of this time would have made admirable 
paintings. The final exclusiveness of his art was self-chosen. 


56 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


82 From the painting Forging the Shaft in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


JOHN FERGUSON WEIR, N.A. 
Our factories are generally regarded as the foes of art. A few painters, however, have understood the pic- 
turesqueness of the new conditions of work. Among the first to do so was John Ferguson Weir. He was 
born at West Point, New York, in 1841, and trained by his father Robert Walter Weir, and in the National 
Academy school. A portrait and genre painter of ability, his picture of toil, Forging the Shaft, is one of the 
earliest pictures of its sort in America — about 1867 — and is still one of the best. Weir has written an ex- 
cellent life of John Trumbull and was for thirty years director of the Yale School of the Fine Arts. 


THOMAS HOVENDEN, N.A. 
AMERICAN genre painting preferred, after sound English precedent, the small picture fit for a private house. 
In France, in order to count in great exhibitions, the genre painters usually worked on the scale of life. This 
habit was introduced among us by Thomas Hovenden who was born at Dunmanway, Ireland, in 1840 and died 
at Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, in 1895. Hovenden studied at the Cork School of Design, and, after 
1863, in the National Academy 
school, and finally under Cabanel 
at Paris. Hovenden became a 
genre painter on a heroic scale, 
evidently in emulation of the 
Salon pictures, studying the greater 
emotions and emergencies of com- 
mon folk with a sympathy that 
generally escaped sentimentalism. 
One must regard his talent as mis- 
directed, for the life-size genre 
picture undertakes an impossible 
competition with the domestic 
drama. In Jerusalem the Golden 
he depicted with a sure hand the 
religious faith of his American 
generation. One can guess that 
the heavenly vision before the in- 
valid’s eyes is shaped by words 
she has heard fall from the lips of 


83 From the painting Jerusalem the Gulden in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Dwight thy. Moody. 


57 


GENRE PAINTING FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO 1890 


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58 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


85 From the painting Salutat in the possession of the estate of Thomas Eakins 


SALUTAT 


AsivE from the superb male nude, the best 
perhaps ever painted in America, Eakins’ 
hints of the elation of the prize ring are 
incomparably sure and just. American art 
has rarely been so emphatically a man’s 
art. The genius of Thomas Eakins got 
little recognition in his lifetime. He led a 
retired life at Philadelphia, spending his 
great powers chiefly as a teacher, and died 
there in 1906. In retrospect he seems one 
of our greatest painters among those who 
essayed the delicate task of saying an 
American thing im a pictorial language 
essentially French. 


EDWARD LAMSON HENRY, N.A. 


Epwarp Lamson Henry, too, commanded 
the new Parisian resources, but his use of 
them is so modest and unobtrusive that he 
seems the most native of our painters. He 
was born in 1841 at Charleston, South 
Carolina. He began his studies in the Penn- 
sylvania Academy and pursued them with 
Suisse, Gleyre, and Courbet at Paris. As 
a Charlestonian, his eyes had opened upon 
the dignity of colonial mansions and as a 
boy he had witnessed the survival of the 


graciousness of the old aristocratic régime. ‘These early impressions fixed his themes. His small and ex- 
quisitely wrought genre pictures reconstruct in charming fashion the look and manners of early Republican 
America. See No. 7 for the portrait of the lady who presided over this old mansion of Westover. ” 


” 36 From the painting The Old Westover Mansion in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington : 


eee a or 


CHUA POD ites Veieiar 


EARLY VISIONARIES, 1860—1gQ00 


to mystical concentration. Hence the mood of vision is as rare in our painting 

as in our literature. With the exception of some short stories by Hawthorne and 

Judd’s Margaret, we have little to show in letters for the mood of dream, though 
Poe had his fine moments of hallucination. But these writings are admittedly exceptional. 
In our painting it has been the same. We cannot credit to mysticism the commonplace 
allegory and symbolism of Cole’s latest vein as represented by The Voyage of Life and 
The Course of Empire. It was only with the Civil War and Elihu Vedder’s return from 
Italy that the visionary vein was evoked in America with any richness. 

About 1876 a notable trio, George Fuller, Albert P. Ryder and Ralph A. Blakelock, 
continued the vein. Fuller, trained in the old methods of face painting, was driven for 
many years by the needs of his family into farming. They were years of fruitful medi- 
tation. He learned first the lesson of envelopment — that fine painting is not to thrust 
the pictorial form toward the eye but rather to draw the eye gradually into the picture 
and around the forms. And the new pictures were hazy with autumnal russets in which 
the forms shimmer with a charming ambiguity. Perhaps the best are such single figures 
as the Nydia, Winifred Dysart, the Quadroon, and the Arethusa (No. 88). All live quietly 
in their brown-gold mist with a peculiar and appealing wistfulness. 

Ryder’s vein was moonlight and legend, brought to earth by just reminiscences of 
his native Cape Cod. He apparently never sketched from nature but observed much, 
mostly at night. He worked out his little pictures slowly and painfully from faint in- 
timations to the fullest and most emphatic imaginative effects. His compositions were 
simple and right; his dark color, rich; and he invented especial felicities of green-blue 
counting for moonlight and sharp yellow counting for white. To the spell and vastness 
of the sea Ryder was especially sensitive. Into legend he had a deep insight, borrowing 
from Chaucer, his Constance (No. 91); from Wagner, Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens 
(No. 93) and the Flying Dutchman — his two most tumultuously powerful canvases. Of 
like accent is the Jonah (No. 89), incomparable whether as a legend or simply as a sea- 
piece. In whatever he undertook, his serenity and greatness never forsook him, and there 
is nothing to regret in his career save his untutored habit of employing at random bad 
colors and treacherous mediums which threaten the permanency of some of his best 
pictures. Personally a recluse, and most contentedly so, he had recognition where it 
was valuable, and he lived happily in the sufficient fellowship of his own visions and in 
that of the great dreamers of greater times. Ralph A. Blakelock was a lesser spirit, but 
a true poet if a minor one. Doubtless a belated repentance for the neglect he suffered 
and the pathos of his mental breakdown have unduly enhanced his legend. He saw land- 
Scape as a coruscation of russet and gold with rare flashes of azure; made few studies 
from nature, but composed his pictures to suit himself. 

It should be noted that as a class these individualists and visionaries are the most 
American artists we have. Neither their minds nor their methods betray any alien tinge. 
That they have been so few, suggests that there are depths in our American temperament 
which have as yet been inadequately sounded by our art. 

xXII—5 59 


A SHE American mind is concrete and little disposed to let itself wander, and as little 


60 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


eS. i 2 ey 


87 From the painting The Lost Mind in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


GEORGE FULLER, A.N.A., S.A.A. 


Ir Vedder’s visions usually had a European refer- 
ence, George Fuller’s were characteristically Ameri- 
can. He was born at Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 
1822. His talent was of slow but rich development. 
Self-trained as a portrait painter, he was forced out 
of painting for fifteen years by family loyalties. 
From 1859 to 1876 he was a farmer at his birthplace, 
and during this time, largely through meditation, he 
developed his russet, atmospheric style. In his later 
years he devoted himself to imaginative and rustic 
themes — Nydia, Arethusa, Psyche, Turkey Pasture, 
Trial for Witchcraft. His art is one of reticence, 
intimacy and suggestion. Although he drew some 
of his subjects from Europe, as in the present case, 
a certain delicacy in the sentiment and personal in- 
tensity in expression, as well as an absence of tradi- 
tional formulas, marks the work as a most authentic 
product of New England. In mood merely there is 
even a certain affinity between George Fuller and 
the greatest of the New England sculptors, Olin Levi 
Warner (Nos. 307-8). He died in 1884 at Boston. 


ELIHU VEDDER, N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.L. 


For fifty years the devotees of the grand style had 
attempted imaginative design with little success. 
It remained for wiser and more modest talents to 
make the attempt successfully. They were wiser 
because they saw the imaginative was not to be 
found in formulas and precepts; they were more 
modest because they looked not to imposing subject 
matter but to personal experience. Elihu Vedder 
was one of our earliest real visionaries. He was born 
at New York in 1836; died at Rome in 1923. A 
pupil of Picot at Paris and of Bonaiuti at Florence, 
he was chiefly self-trained through intelligent study 
of the Italian old masters. He became a figure 
painter and mural decorator of great imaginative 
power. In his earlier period he made chiefly little 
pictures, The Lair of the Sea Serpent, The Questioner 
of the Sphinx, The Lost Mind. He composed the 
famous illustrations for Omar Khayyém (No. 507) 
in 1884, and in his later years practiced mural paint- 
ing, notably a series of panels for the Library of 
Congress. It was a tribute to Vedder’s prestige that 
he was one of only half a dozen or so older painters 
whom the young profession asked to join the Society 
of American Artists. In universality as an artist 
he had no American competitor in his own time 
save John La Farge. (See also Nos. 158, 181, 495). 


88 From the painting Arethusa in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


EARLY VISIONARIES, 1860-1900 61 


89 Bebe the painting Jonah in the possession of John Gellatly, New York 


ALBERT PINKHAM RYDER, S.A.A., N.A. 


AmoncG our early dreamers of dreams the greatest genius was Albert Pinkham Ryder. There never was a 
more concentrated life. Nothing was permitted to distract him from the slow and patient expression of his 
vision. He was born at New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1848 and died at New York in 1917. The stretch 
of sixty-nine years is almost without incident in the ordinary sense. In the early ’seventies Ryder studied 
with William Edgar Marshall and at the National Academy school. He lived resolutely as a recluse and 
bachelor, devoting himself to legendary and often nocturnal subjects which he interpreted with the greatest 
imaginative power, working always from memory and imagination in a subjective vein fraught with high 
poesy. His pictures are small in scale but big with thought, and ovenstonal'y; as in the present vision, reach 
a tremendous sublimity. 


90 From the painting Smuggler’s Cove in the Metropolitan Museum pe Art, New York 


RYDER’S MARINES 


Tue sea always enticed Ryder. He studied all of its nocturnal phases, keeping essential truths, but transform- 
ing them into strange appearances that only the artist’s inner eye had seen. Behind such work always lie 
memories of early days at New Bedford. This tiny canvas fully conveys Ryder’s fine emphasis of composi- 
tion, his command of luminosity through low tones, and above all his romantic sentiment. To a place and a 


moment, his pondered and laborious art gives a strange beauty and importance. 


62 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


91 From the painting Constance in the collection of Lady Van Horne, Montreal, Canada 


RYDER AS A PAINTER OF LEGEND 


Tue great legends of a few old books were Ryder’s favorite reading. The Bible, Chaucer, the Nibelungenlied 
gave material for his most personal invention. In the present case taking his clue from Chaucer’s Tale of 
the Man of Lawe, Ryder has shown Constance and her babe cast adrift on a sea which is kept miraculously 
calm. The mood contrasts charmingly with that sense of peril and tragedy with which the poet-painter 
usually invested his sea pieces. 


RYDER 
AS SYMBOLIST 


THE suicide of Ryder’s bar- 
ber, who had lost his savings 
on the race track, was the 
humble occasion of what was 
to be a universal symbol. 
The meaning is no longer 
the death that lurks for the 
gambler, but rather a death 
still active and _ insatiate 
when all his victims are 
gone. The touch of quaint- 
ness in the grandeur of the 
work is eminently charac- 
teristic of the artist. The 
skeleton rider is borrowed 
from old Breugel’s Triwmph 
of Death which Ryder had 


seen on a visit to Madrid. 


SO 5 aie 


92 From the painting Death on the Race Track in the Ferargil Galleries, Ne 


w York 


LEGENDS AND 
LANDSCAPES 


Tue fantastic energy of 
Ryder appears at its height 
in the Jonah, The Flying 
Dutchman and the Sieg- 
fried. Possibly the great- 
estis The Flying Dutchman, 
but since it cannot be well 
reproduced, the present 
picture, which also illus- 
trates Ryder’s powerful 
simplifications of land- 
scape forms, ischosen. It 
was exhibited at the So- 
ciety of American Art- 
ists in 1902 and is the 
latest of Ryder’s great 
compositions. 


RALPH ALBERT 
BLAKELOCK, N.A. 


It is a much more limited 
poetry that we find in 
R. A. Blakelock, who was 
born at New York in 1847. 
He was a self-taught land- 
scapist working in a fan- 


EARLY VISIONARIES, 1860-1900 63 


93 From the painting Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens in the collection of 
Lady Van Horne, Montreal, Canada 


tastic and decorative sense, making all sacrifices to secure splendid tone and great composition. He painted 
also admirable fantasies from Indian life. Driven by poverty and neglect into insanity he remained under 
that cloud for most of the last twenty years of his life. Within his narrow range, he is a poetical spirit of de- 
lightful quality, but his habitual brown and yellow tonalities are at times monotonous. 


94 From the painting The Pipe Dance in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


95 


From the painting The Brook by Moonlight in the 
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, O 


FREDERICK STUART CHURCH, N.A. 


Fancy rather than imagination determined the inventions of 
Frederick Stuart Church, but in his minor degree he too be- 
longs with the visionaries. Born at Grand Rapids, Michigan, 
in 1842, he was successively a pupil of Lemuel Everett Wil- 
marth, Walter Shirlaw, the Art Students’ League and the 
National Academy school. As a figure painter he developed 
a delightfully fanciful mood, seeking naive symbolical relations 
between human and animal forms and those of inanimate na- 
ture. His notebooks are filled with sketches of animals in 
the New York “Zoo.” By this careful study of nature he 
disciplined himself to secure accuracy and expressiveness of 
form in imaginative compositions. In the same vein he was a 
deservedly popular illustrator, especially for children’s maga- 
He died in New York City in 1924. Beside the cre- 
atively imaginative men, Church may seem a minor figure, 
yet he is authentically their little brother. His is a world of 
caprice and transformation. He notes charming and unex- 
pected associations of beasts and men; for him the crest of 
the surf defines mermaids against the sky. These caprices he 
hits off with a touch that is both witty and tender. 


zines. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


UNTAMED NATURE 
BLaKELOCK’s imagination was permanently 
tinged by memories of Indian life which he 
had gathered in an early trip to the plains. 
These pictures tingle with color and with the 
glamour of a fine barbarism maintaining it- 
self against the onrush of a. more prosaic 
civilization. Blakelock enjoyed a lucid in- 
terval a year or two before his death, and 
received unwonted honors, including an 
election to the Academy. But he was soon 
compelled to return to the Connecticut 
asylum where, in 1919, he died. Blakelock’s 
tragic legend makes any calm estimate of his 
art very difficult. He will surely be remem- 
bered for a few great pictures. His master- 
piece The Brook by Moonlight appears here 
rather than among the landscapes because 
with immense effectiveness it really has little 
reference to the facts of such a scene. Every- 
thing is transmuted in the direction of 
decoration and poetry. Losing at a very 
early period his original interest in the re- 
alistic aspects of nature, he became gradu- 
ally more and more absorbed in the creation 
of harmonious flowing compositions with 
warm brown, silver and lighter blue as the 
dominant themal colors. 


Ba Se” 


From the painting Sirens in Washington 
University, St. Louis 


CHAPTER IX 


INTERMEDIATE PORTRAITURE, 1860 TO 1876 


; FEW of the early Republican portraitists survived the Civil War, but as they 
dropped off one by one they seldom left successors of equal ability. And the 
practice was no longer standardized after the English model, but betrayed new 

influences, from Paris and Diisseldorf and Munich. Indeed the daguerreotype and the 

photograph had, from about 1840, seriously impaired portrait painting as a trade. The 
photograph supplied every commemorative need of the average family, and the painted 
portrait, from being a necessity of every well-to-do household, became the luxury of the 
rich. Relatively few portraits were painted and these often by artists not primarily 
 portraitists, such as the feeble but popular Daniel Huntington, and the more gifted 

William Page and Henry Peters Gray. There was a similar shrinkage in the number of 

professional portraitists. One can see that the situation had grown unfavorable for them. 

Clearly, from the point of view of attaining such professional athleticism as, say, Sully or 

Waldo possessed, it is far better to paint fifty heads for one hundred dollars each than one 

head for a thousand. Morse, the ablest portraitist of his generation, early quit painting 

for invention. Eastman Johnson is about the only notable portrait painter who carried 
on the old style, much refreshed by restudy of its own Flemish exemplars, to the end of 
the century. His only rival for quality, G. P. A. Healy, made his distinguished career 
in Paris. Whistler painted his masterpieces in London, and of the French-trained men 
of the ’sixties only William M. Hunt attained even a mediocre success in portraiture at 
home. For the historian, the unhappy result follows that our artistic record of the men 
and women of the Civil War rests largely on the perfunctory work of the photographer. 

And this poverty of good portraiture was hardly alleviated by the practice, prevalent 

from the ’seventies, of employing the fashionable French portraitists abroad or bringing 

them over to New York under the dealers’ auspices. For the foreigners generally 
brought little insight into their hack work of painting Americans. 

Meanwhile the social bond between the painter and his patron had loosened. The 
new wealth suddenly gained in finance and industry was little versed in art, had no taste 
of its own, and readily responded to the suggestions of cosmopolitan dealers who were 
little concerned with the welfare of American art. The period under review was not, in 
fact, conducive to the encouragement of the native portrait painter, who necessarily 
depends for his assignments upon the prevailing fashions of the day. The family portrait 
gallery at this time was the possession only of those whose forbears had a colonial or 
early Republican background. 

In fine, this transitional period was one of confusion and partial retrogression. In 
the ’seventies, a considerable work of redintegration of American portraiture was accom- 
plished by the men trained abroad, but our portraiture has never regained such coherence 
as a school as that which it could boast in the times of Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Sully. 


65 


66 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM PAGE, N.A., P.N.A. 


In leaving the visionaries we close one of our most in- 
teresting chapters. Not so much can be promised for the 
present one. Nevertheless the portraiture that represents 
the cross currents of hesitation before and after the Civil 
War is symptomatic and important. The florid English 
tradition of portraiture had pretty well gone bankrupt by 
1850, and we’ find various endeavors to renovate the art 
either by drawing from new foreign sources or by isolated 
individual experimentation. Thus there is no longer a 
style; indeed one can hardly assert that there were even 
styles. Perhaps William Page, whom we have already met 
as a figure painter (No. 57), came nearest to developing 
an individual manner that had stylistic distinction. De- 
spite his constant study of the Italian old masters, Page 
never arrived at a consistent and effective technique. Still 
he produced a few portraits of rare feeling and dignity. 
Best known is that of his wife, still in the possession of the 
97 Drom’ the porikait’eP maaan Ankenes family. Of similar excellence is the one here reproduced. 

Mamba bisakt Se Page had what the early portraitists had lacked — contact 
with the great Italian masters and a reverent sense of the mystery 
of personality. 


CHARLES LORING ELLIOTT, N.A. 


Facitity was the new note in the portraiture of Charles Loring 
Elliott, who was born at Scipio, New York, in 1812 and died at 
Albany, New York, in 1868. He had an odd pair of masters, 
but both handy with the brush, Trumbull and Quidor. Although 
much of Elliott’s always competent portraiture was done before 
the Civil War, from his richer and more painter-like handling he 
really belongs with the transitional men. This portrait of the 
venerable landscapist Durand was painted in 1864 and represents 
Elliott very favorably. He executed portraits, including full- 
lengths, for many 
eminent Ameri- 
cans of his day. 


98 From the portrait of Asher B. Durand in the 
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 


GEORGE PETER ALEXANDER HEALY, N.A. (hon.) 


Or somewhat similar caliber was George Peter Alexander 
Healy, a straightforward portraitist of uncommon technical 
capacity. Born at Boston in 1813, he went to Paris in 1836 
and thereafter painted portraits in Europe with much suc- 
cess. He returned to America in 1855 and worked chiefly 
at Chicago, but once more went back to pass his old age 
at Paris, where he died in 1924. He made for Fanueil Hall, 
Boston, the great historical picture, Webster's Reply to 
Hayne (Vol. VIII, No. 549), which was engraved and 
widely circulated. His painter-like style, drawn from obser- 
vation and intelligent study of Parisian precedents, was a full 
generation ahead of that of his fellow-portraitists in America. 


99 From a self-portrait in the Art Institute of Chicago 


INTERMEDIATE PORTRAITURE, 1860 TO 1876 67 


DANIEL HUNTINGTON, N.A., P.N.A. 


TuoueH Huntington was almost as feeble in portraiture as he 
was in historical painting (No. 56), his vogue and his exact 
adaptation to the taste of the ‘fifties and ‘sixties make it de- 
sirable to include him. One has only to compare this military 
portrait with Stuart’s General Knox (No. 24) to realize the 
falling off in the art during the period of the Civil War. Yet the 
Admiral Breese shows Huntington quite at his best. His female 
portraits, with most of this transitional period, continue the 
emptily pretty and insipid vein of the old book-of-beauty en- 
gravings. 


100 From the portrait of Rear-Admiral Samuel L. 
Breese in the New York Historical Society 


EASTMAN JOHNSON, N.A. 


For his sobriety and vitality Eastman John- 
son dominates this moment in portraiture 
as he does in genre painting (Nos. 75, 76). 
Johnson had studied the best Dutch and 
Flemish painters, and, reviving the lost 
vitality of the early American manner, 
itself remotely derived from the Low Coun- 
tries, made himself a sterling portraitist in 

eee 8 the objective tradition. This picture was 
101 From the painting Two Men in the Metropolitan RaGacien le done in 1881 and represents Robert M. 

ee as Rutherford and Samuel W. Rowse, the art- 
ist, at the right. It is admirably solid and characterful, and handsomely painted. Perhaps the fine sobriety 
of the method told against it at a moment when technical ostentation was in the fashion. 


WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT 


In the portraiture of William Morris Hunt we find antici- 
pated that precise and perhaps too literal adaptation of con- 
temporary Parisian methods which was to be the note of the 
next generation of progressive American painters. Hunt was 
born in 1824 at Brattleboro, Vermont. He studied at Diissel- 
dorf and with Couture at Paris. Hunt was also much in- 
fluenced by his friendship with Millet. This admirably 
straightforward portrait of the great agitator against slavery, 
Charles Sumner, rests upon the robust formulas of Couture 
and well illustrates Hunt’s position as a pioneer of the better 
French method in America. It suggests emphatically the 
strange combination of noble altruism and personal vanity 
in the great abolitionist statesman. Hunt was a capital 
teacher at Boston and introduced there a taste for the Barbizon 
School. His early death by drowning, in 1879, was a great loss 
to the art of painting in America. (See also Nos. 155, 458.) 


102 From the portrait of Charles Sumner in the possession 
of Mrs. E. Hunt Slater, courcesy of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


CHAPTER X 


WHISTLER AND LA FARGE 


AMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER and John La Farge fit so little with 
the general scheme of American painting that a separate consideration of them is 
necessary. Born within a year of each other, both were precursors, occupying by 
1868 a position that American painting as a whole was not to attain for twenty 

years to come. Both were experimentalists and eclectics, Whistler undergoing succes- 
sively the influence of Courbet’s realism, that of the English Pre-Raphaelites, accepting 
Japanese ideas of informal composition, and finally drawing from the dark Impressionism 
of Velasquez; La Farge, with more coherence and centrality, absorbing the great Euro- 
pean tradition of Titian and Rubens and Delacroix. Both were eloquent and persuasive 
writers and lecturers, though of opposed tendencies. Whistler, in his Ten O’Clock, gave 
the clearest utterance to the doctrine of art for art’s sake — art as a casual and unguided 
phenomenon and wholly in charge of the artist; La Farge, on the contrary, was a human- 
ist, and in his Considerations on Painting and many another book of fine criticism, he 
stressed the old truth that the artist is or should be representative of his time. 

Disagreeing in theory, their practice had much in common. Both, by the middle ’sixties, 
had realized that the analytic methods would no longer do and that fine painting must 
rest on exact and refined color harmonies based on the actual relations of light in nature, 
and both perceived that a picture must always be decorative. Thus both are precursors 
of the Luminist Movement, being in advance even of the European practice of the 
moment in that regard. But neither found it necessary to invent a new palette or handling 
to cope with their new delicate requirements of notation of light. Careful improvements 
on traditional methods sufficed. And neither set himself the problem of rendering full 
sunlight, believing perhaps that such effects are confusing and not really paintable. 
Whistler indeed found the greatest thrill in the rich and vast effects of nightfall. La Farge 
preferred a moderated daylight which allowed all colors their fullest saturation. About 
1865 Whistler began to paint his nocturnes and John La Farge his handful of early, green 
landscapes and luscious flower pieces. Nothing like either had been seen, the nearest 
thing being certain early canvases of Fantin-Latour. Both Whistler and La Farge 
exemplified moderation, refinement, thoughtfulness, at the moment when either super- 
ficial brilliancy or overt robustness were becoming the mode. 

The time was not ripe for their teaching. La Farge’s landscapes and flower pieces 
disappeared promptly in private collections and were without influence. Whistler, 
through ridicule and abuse, got consideration for the nocturnes, but it took twenty years, 
and meanwhile his portraits had overshadowed his other paintings. Whistler, choosing 
to remain in London, was only an intermittent influence in America, but strongly so after 
1890. La Farge was a constant influence for a sound humanism and traditionalism and 
did much both to link our art with that of the great European past and also to raise the 
professional standard of the American artist. Like most prophets, they never had their 
due honor, but history, which will not forget their works, will not fail to extol the perhaps 
equal importance of their leadership. 

For these reasons Whistler’s paintings are grouped together here, and three early paint- 
ings of La Farge. His later paintings are naturally included in their proper chapter. 

68 


WHISTLER AND LA FARGE 69 


JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL 
WHISTLER, S.A.A. 


James Asppott McNeiuu WHISTLER was born at 
Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834 and died in 1903 
in London. After his youth Whistler was always 
in Europe and his professional triumphs were 
won in London and Paris. All the same, his 
painting in its delicate eclecticism is such as 
no European could or would have produced. 
Whistler was a pupil of Gleyre at Paris, but 
was chiefly self-trained. He worked mostly in 
London. During the large part of his life he was 
more famous as a caustic wit and a persuasive 
critic than as a painter. His eminently eclectic 
art is a product of consummate taste often un- 
supported by the requisite technical resources. 
For its fastidious grace it is always captivating; 
occasionally it strikes a deeper note. The Thames 
an Ice, painted in 1859, is based on the practice 
of his early friend Courbet and achieves a robust 
realism which Whistler was soon. to forsake 
and ridicule in his critiques: “If the man who 
paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface 
he sees before him were an artist, the king of 
artists would be the photographer.” (See also 
Nos. 431-33, 459-60.) 


oh ae sie se 


103 From the painting The Thames in Ice, in the 
Freer Gallery of Art, Washington 


WHISTLER’S ASTHETIC INNOVATIONS 


Tae Lirrte Wuire Girt was painted in 1864 under the in- 
fluence of the Pre-Raphaelites, and particularly of Rossetti. 
It is a perfect picture, whether as lovely execution or as 
evocation of mood. It inspired Swinburne to write Before 
the Mirror; Verses under a Picture. The figure immortal- 
ized in this masterpiece is the artist’s Irish model, “Jo,” 
who also sat for some of his best etchings, and also for some 
of Courbet’s pictures. The insistence on harmonious rela- 
tions of tone in this picture already forecasts the manner 
that was to make Whistler famous. It was an innovation 
at this time to paint white on white without obviously 
defining shadows; only Manet in France had undertaken 
such a problem. Whistler’s successful solution of this 
difficult technical problem is after all less important than 
the impeccable composition and the loveliness of the mood. 
Few painters have captured a beauty so wistful and appeal- 
ing, and yet Whistler, with the hyperbole inseparable 
from the reformer and the wit, contended in all his 
writings that “‘art should stand alone and appeal to the 
artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this 
with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, 
love, patriotism and the like.” The picture was exhibited 


among the paintings by Americans at the Paris Exposi- 


104 From the painting The Little White Girl in the : 
National Gallery, London tion of 1867. 


- 


e 


% 
- 


a ee 


70 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


105 From the painting Blue and Gold, Valparaiso Bay in the 
Freer Gallery of Art, Washington 


WHISTLER’S NOCTURNES 


THE same premonitory character belongs to the 
nocturne, Blue and Gold, painted in 1866 from 
memories of a voyage to Valparaiso. This is 
one of the earliest and one of the best of the 
famous nocturnes. The name and the indica- 
tion of the color scheme are later, dating from 
the early ’seventies. No one has painted the hue 
and mystery and quiet of night more admirably. 
Already one may trace the influence of Japanese 
prints in the plunging point of view and the odd 
and interesting projection of the pier. 


WHISTLER AS 
PORTRAITIST 


Tus serene and sensitive vision of a masterful 
old age finding a strength in resignation was re- 
fused at the Royal Academy of 1872; failed of a 
purchaser at an absurdly low price when ex- 
hibited in America; and was purchased by the 
French Government in 1891. In 1926 it received 
the ultimate honor of transfer to the Louvre. 
There is much from Velasquez in the crisp and 
accurate registration of the grays but more of 
Whistler, especially in the impeccable composi- 
tional pattern. The reticent and withdrawing 
quality of the work is characteristic of Whistler’s 
finest portraits. They live regardless of any 
observer in a world of their own which is out- 
wardly symbolized by a delicate gloom between 


the figure and the picture plane. Again the method is that of Velasquez, but the application of it is 


entirely personal. 


WHISTLER AND LA FARGE 71 


WHISTLER’S AIM AS COLORIST 


WHIstLER is both most Japanese and most 
himself in the nocturne Old Battersea Bridge, 
which was painted about 1877 and directly 
inspired by a print of Hiroshige. The distance, 
scale and shimmer of moonlight and the move- 
ment of water are suggested by infinitesimal 
gradations of tone which represent the ulti- 
mate refinement of Whistler’s art. For this 
beautiful work Whistler was put under cross- 
examination in the Ruskin trial of 1878. 
The trial was occasioned by Ruskin’s abuse of 
the nocturne Fireworks at Cremorne. Old Bat- 
tersea Bridge was brought in to prove Whistler’s 
incompetence. The artist maintained with 
dignity, under clumsy raillery, that his “whole 
scheme was to bring about a certain harmony 
of color.” With such statements, he always 
concealed those resources of tenderness and 
sympathy which are quite as important in his 
art as its fastidious arrangement of tones and 
masses. 


JOHN LA FARGE, N.A., S.A.A. 


Waite Whistler was an intermittent and tardy 
influence upon American painting, John 
La Farge through a long and fruitful activity 107. +¥From the painting pie Re a ee mocuiane te blue and silver 

was a constant civilizing influence. He stood 

against the growing habit of aping contemporary Paris fashion, and for a considerate study of all the great 
traditions. He was born in 1835 at New York and died at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1910. La Farge 
studied casually with Couture in Paris and was also aided by William Morris Hunt. Before his development 
as a great decorator, he 
painted in the ’sixties 
large flower pieces (No. 
109), made book illustra- 
tions (Nos. 419, 496, 499), 
and a few landscapes 
which were both a genera- 
tion ahead of’ the Ameri- 
can practice and singularly 
without influence from 
the contemporary French 
school. In them his natu- 
ral gift as a colorist was 
displayed nobly and with 
simplicity. He was the 
first American to abandon 
the conventional browns, 
which the English school 
had bequeathed to us in 
the early nineteenth cen- 
tury, and the first to paint 
the greens in full hue. 


se a y Fs b: ae ‘ we. < oe mae + 
108 From the painting Paradise Valley, Newport, in the collection of Thornton K. Lothrop, Boston 


72 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


LA FARGE’S FLOWER 
PIECES 


La Farce’s large flower pieces of 
the late ’sixties and early ’seven- 
ties were an innovation. The 
flowers were represented as grow- 
ing; large flowers were chosen, 
generally the usual scale of still 
life was greatly enlarged, and 
effects were obtained which only 
the early Chinese painters had be- 
fore attempted. To a fine sense 
of the actual appearance of flowers 
and of the nature of their growth 
La Farge added his own personal 
taste as a master of decorative ar- 
rangement. A few discerning 
amateurs promptly buried these 
flower pieces in their collections. It 
is possible, however, that the paint- 
ers of the moment would merely 
have been shocked by the freedom 
of the handling and the unconven- 
tionality of the point of view. For 
at this time he was criticized as 
being merely a decorator, absorbed 
in the picturesque or the incidental, 
and tainted with an excessive pre- 
closity. 


109 From the painting ne Roses and Water Lily ia the collection 
of M. R. Phillip, New York 


LA FARGE’S EARLY FIGURE PAINTING 


In this gracious canvas of 1870, the later monumentality 
of La Farge’s style is clearly forecast, and it has his full 
splendor of color. (See frontispiece in color.) In a 
general way the tradition is that of the Venetian painters 
of the Renaissance, but it has an urbanity proper to 
La Farge himself. It was painted at a moment when 
La Farge was occupied with narrative illustration, and 
represents an advance toward symbolism. Later we 
shall consider him as a water colorist (Nos. 220-21) 
and mural decorator (Nos. 152-54). He was a universal 
craftsman, the inventor of a beautiful new method of 
making pictorial stained glass (Nos. 186-87). His 
assistants, almost without exception, became good 
painters in their own right. His influence on American 
painting can hardly be overestimated. The personality 
of the artist was an innovation in itself. From his child- 
hood he had lived in an atmosphere of sophisticated 
culture, that compared to the life of his neighbors seems 
almost rarified. A discriminating reader, a brilliant 


conversationalist, he created a circle of friends quite 


110 From the palit The Muse of Painting in the 
unique. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


CHAPTER XI 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 


and Winslow Homer, grows solidly out of the dual native tradition of Cole and 

Durand. It shares Cole’s love of vastness and, at its beginnings, Durand’s 
zeal for minute details. Its development in every case is from analytical to synthetic 
ideals, a process furthered by the growing influence of French landscape art in America. 
Here a definition of terms may be useful. I have a detail to paint, say a thicket in fore- 
ground. If I represent every bush, twig and leaf, that is an analytic procedure, and if 
I cut the detail out of the canvas, it will still mean what it did before. If, on the other 
hand, I cunningly assemble blobs of fitting color and knead and scratch them till at a 
proper distance they look like a thicket, that is a synthetic procedure, and if you cut the 
detail from the canvas, in isolation it will mean nothing. 

Now this issue of analysis and synthesis was ever at the esthetic battle front during 
the ’seventies and ’eighties. Forgetting that Cole himself had gone far in the direction 
of synthesis, most of our artists worked analytically under the general leadership of 
Durand and Kensett. For them, what they called drawing, meaning of course analytic 
and linear drawing, was not merely an American but also a moral issue. In this faith the 
American landscapist was simply three generations behind the times as regarded England, 
and two as regarded France. Wilson, Turner and Constable, with Corot and Millet, had 
illustrated all the merits of the synthetic mood. That those superb lessons were com- 
pletely disregarded in America till about 1870 is striking testimony to the isolated and 
provincial character of our early landscape school. Just before 1880 the critic, George 
Sheldon, interviewed the leading American painters about the French pictures, and 
released a torrent of abuse directed chiefly against Corot. That poet-painter’s only active 
champion was, significantly, George Inness, who remarked that the greatness of a work 
of art lay in the realm of emotion and idea and not in the realm of fact, and that Corot’s 
poetry was exquisite and supreme. 

Inness had come gradually to such convictions. After casual work in engraving and 
equally transitory lessons from Régis Gignoux, he began in the late ‘thirties with pano- 
ramic pictures, compiled, one may guess, from English prints, of amazing cleverness and 
falseness. In the forties he traveled in Italy, met the mystic, William Page, and under- 
went a religious and xsthetic conversion. Its results were.shown in nearly twenty years 
of intense application to analytic studies under the influence of Durand. 

By the end of the Civil War he had mastered the elements of a sound synthesis, had 
enriched his color, and opened his eyes to the pervasive charm of enveloping atmosphere. 
The masterpieces of this fine moment are the great Peace and Plenty (No. 112) and several 
- magnificent vistas of the cloud-filled Delaware valley (No. 113). We have the panoramic 
subjects of Cole interpreted with the colorful flexibility of the mature Constable. 

In the early ’seventies there was an Italian sojourn of several years. It produced a 
new concentration — greater regard for mass, texture, and monumental composition. 

73 


(): best landscape, as created by George Inness, Homer D. Martin, A. D. Wyant 


74 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Barberini Pines (No. 114) is the best work of this phase, and from the point of view of im- 
pressive representation the pictures of this moment are hardly surpassed in the century. 

Then followed a wide break with his previous practice, years when the work is inde- 
terminate and yeasty, yet often of rare suggestiveness. His last fifteen years were spent 
at Montclair, New Jersey, on the northern brink of the vast Hackensack-Passaic meadows 
within sight of which he was born. The subjects are now intimate memory pictures — 
edges of villages, interiors of woods and orchards. The color is resplendent and trans- 
parent, the mood is sun-worshiping and light-worshiping. Indeed as a mystic, Inness 
believed nature to be merely so many indications of God. Of form there is only slight 
definition, and the forms are fewer and more carefully chosen. This is the Inness of the 
Haunt of the Heron, Tarpon Springs, Evening, Montclair, Rainbow after Rain, the Old 
Orchard. In these late Innesses, favorites to-day of the auction room and museum, a sober 
taste may occasionally find something hectic and overripe, and his ultimate fame may 
rest rather upon the finest canvases of the late ’sixties and ’seventies, in which the grip 
on fact is stronger, than upon his last splendid improvisations. 

Yet Inness clearly deserves his primacy among our landscape painters if only for his 
vitality and variety, for his resolute and intelligent experimentalism, for his discreet 
assimilation of French influences without a trace of copyism. His methods were in- 
imitable and he may be said rather to have constituted our landscape school than to 
have founded it. 

Homer D. Martin presents a simpler problem. He went for many years to school with 
nature in the Adirondacks and White Mountains. His subjects were those of Cole, vast 
forest and mountain solitudes, and before 1870, repeating Cole’s sober colors, he had 
gained only about Cole’s slender skill. Then he went to New York and his art broadened. 
His touch becomes crisp like Kensett’s, but with a graver accent. He develops a new 
urbanity and peculiar felicities of saturated green meadows and resonant blue-green 
skies. Lake Sanford (No. 120) and the fine panorama of Lake Champlain owned by 
Mr. W. C. Brownell are landmarks of this time, as is the early version of Sand Dunes, 
Lake Ontario. At the end of the ’seventies his touch grows lighter, his color thinner and 
more luminous, his tone more unified, and he produces such lyrical canvases as Andante — 
Fifth Symphony (No. 121). 

Then he went to France and for some four years worked obscurely on the Norman 
coast, making a new style. He was now fully conscious of the importance of illumination, 
but he preferred the moderated light of the old schools to the glaring sunlight of the 
Impressionists. His surfaces break up into little touches of exquisitely varied tones. 
Everything quivers positively with light and air. The compositions are more sparse, 
select and thrilling, the mood of fine melancholy more emphatic. Honfleur Light and 
The Old Manor House, Normandy Trees, The Mussel Gatherers, and Golden Sands are the 
masterpieces of this period. 

Finally, he returned to America, forgotten, stricken in health and going blind. Under 
such drawbacks, he produced his greatest pictures, turning over his Norman memories 
and revising in grander fashion his old American compositions. So were created Sand 
Dunes, Lake Ontario, Adirondack Scenery, Westchester Hills (No. 123), The Harp of the 
Winds (No. 122), the surest gages of Martin’s fame, and the best that our American 
landscape has as yet to show. 

Alexander H. Wyant was of narrower range but within i limitations a true poet. 


Encouraged by Inness and passingly influenced by the Diisseldorf style and by Constable, 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 75 


whose pictures he came to know on an early English trip, he passed out of a minute, 
analytic manner and settled, in the ’seventies, to a loose, silvery manner very fit to suggest 
the running of brooks through shaded greenery and the broken light in forest interiors 
or in Adirondack valleys mottled from broken skies. An invalid with a crippled right 
hand, there is an element of heroism in his perseverance. His somewhat monotonous 
note of gentle elegy is always lucid and true. 

The future of our landscape school was soon to be with the vivid broken color of the 
Impressionists and with research of effects of full sunlight, but the more conservative 
spirits followed the example of Inness and Martin, cautiously improving the native style 
by study of the so-called Barbizon landscapists. Those conservatives represent the 
continuity of our native manner, and it may yet prove that the Impressionist adventure 
is rather a brilliant episode than a permanent advance in our art. 

Winslow Homer is so much his own man that he deserves a chapter to himself, and 
it is only for convenience that he is included here. Yet he too made the step from analysis 
to synthesis, and was similarly aided by French exemplars. For ten years after the Civil 
War, his talent announced itself in genre pictures (Nos. 80, 81) of great character and 
accent, but otherwise not remarkable to a generation that had known Mount and still 
retained Eastman Johnson. 

About 1876, his style broadened, and he found his true subject in the powerful canvas 
called Two Guides. Meanwhile, he had been in France and had given more than one look to 
the rich surfaces, crumbling edges and weighty masses of Gustave Courbet. Then he went 
to England, avoiding London and living with the fishermen at Tynemouth. There resulted 
a few canvases and water colors of rare lyrical charm. At fifty, Homer was still merely 
a promising minor artist. His last twenty-five years were spent in the face of the sea at 
Prout’s Neck, Maine, with hunting and fishing interludes in Canada and winter holidays 
in the West Indies. Life in the open and the ocean became his sole themes. He deals with 
them in terms of energy and rugged truth. Toil at sea, and toilsome sport on land have 
never found a better illustrator, and he searched with even finer care the moods of the 
ocean, from its rage as it shakes its hemming cliffs to its moonlit rhythms of calm. He 
spreads his simple and expressive surfaces of paint with determination, asking nothing of 
them but true account of mass, texture and distance. In these matters he is imerrant, 
as he is in the larger issues of composition. There is never a stroke or a feature too much 
or too little. To the usual arts of picture-making, complicated harmonious rhythm of 
line, subtle accordance of tone, refinements of handling, he was oblivious. 

It is a male art and often a raw art, or rather he practiced the refinements of picture- 
making only when off his guard, in those water colors in which the audacity and power of 
the initial attack are not more attractive than the inherent loveliness of the virgin wash. 
A portfolio of these would suffice to establish Homer’s greatness, with his oil paintings as 
valuable collateral evidence. An American figure, somewhat rudely so, sure of his aims, 
content with his limitations, exemplifying every perfection in vision and workmanship 
that is possible outside of the great traditions of culture, his own man, and the man of 
all of us, Winslow Homer is the most native and significant figure that our art has 
produced on the realistic side, as Albert Ryder is our most representative painter on 
the side of poetry and imagination. In opposite directions, to be sure, each had that 
demonic power and lucidity that marks the great artist. With Homer, our pioneer 
energy culminates and closes. His achievement is unique, and never can be measur- 
ably repeated. 


XII—6 


76 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


GEORGE INNESS, 
N.A. 


JupGEeD from his entire 
accomplishment, George 
Inness is our greatest 
landscape painter, though 
Ryder, Thayer and 
Homer D. Martin may 
seem to surpass him in 
particular pictures. Inness 
was born in 1825 at New- 
burgh, New York, and 
died at Bridge of Allan, 
Scotland, in 1894. He 
studied transiently with 
an engraver and with Régis 
Gignoux (No. 70), and 
made frequent trips to 
Europe. His earliest paint- 
ings vie with Durand’s for a hard accuracy and minuteness. This picture of 1856 is a superb example of 
Inness’ early style, being rich and precise in the character of the smallest parts without losing the largeness 
and luminosity of the whole. 


111 From the painting Juniata River. © Curtis & Cameron 


112 From the painting Peace and Plenty in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


INNESS’ ADVANCE TOWARD BREADTH 


Havine mastered details, Inness gradually learned the art of eliminating such as are insignificant. His famous 
picture, Peace and Plenty, shows the process of simplification half accomplished. This great panoramic canvas 
of 1865 is conceived in the old manner of Thomas Cole but has a new resonance of color and a saturation 
with atmosphere which no contemporary but La Farge had attained. It realizes fully the fine work-a-day 
poetry suggested by its title — the spacious pleasantness of our fertile Eastern fields. It also celebrates the 
return of peace after four terrible years of civilwar. Perhaps Inness had in his mind the contrast between such 
a scene and the ruined areas in Georgia and Virginia where the armies of Sherman and Sheridan had marched. 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 77 


113 From the painting Delaware Valley in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SYNTHESES 


In this more concentrated composition of the same’year, 1865, Inness achieves his first picture in a fully 
synthetic style. He now paints with light and air, allowing them to fuse and unify forms that are rather 
indicated than defined. A fuller sense of the movement of clouds and a more restricted and harmonious color 
are also here first achieved. Inness now stands on the ground which the great English landscapist, John 
Constable, had occupied some thirty years earlier. 


A CLASSICAL INTERLUDE 


In such stately and solidly made pictures as this, painted during his Italian trip of 1874, posterity may find 
Inness’ best work. They contrast in their sobriety and selectiveness both with the panoramic richness of 


his early manner, and 
with the gorgeous _all- 
overishness of his popular 
last manner. He applied 
this classical manner to a 
few great canvases on 
American themes, notably 
the noble creation Evening, 
Medfield, in the Metro- 
politan Museum of Art. 
It is rather dark for re- 
production or it would 
have been chosen in place 


of the present picture. 


Technically these pictures 
are still in the old method 
with somber colors, and 
this has militated unduly 
against their popularity. 


114 From the painting Pine Grove of the Barberini Villa, Albano, Italy, in the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


78 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


115 From the painting The Coming Storm in the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, N. Y. © Detroit Publishing Co. 


TOWARD A MORE AERIAL STYLE 


InnEss’ transition from the solidly painted canvases of his early and middle periods to the lightness and 
brilliancy of his last manner is well exemplified in this fine picture of 1878. It repeats in different tones of 
pale green thinly applied the old panoramic formulas which he was soon to forego. The artist is now coping 
successfully with the new problem, attacked at the moment by the French Impressionists, of specific ilumina- 
tion in full daylight. The old conventional browns have now disappeared. 


INNESS’ LAST MANNER 


Too often the late canvases of Inness reflect the instability and excitability of his mysticism. A few are very 
grand, and this is certainly the case with Sunset in the Woods. It was begun in his Italian period about 1874 
and finished in 1891 and is one of the few late pictures, which too often have only a fantastic glamour, in 
which the artist attained 
real majesty of effect. 
Inness writes that he 
had waited seven years 
to obtain “any idea com- 
mensurate with the im- 
pression received on the 
spot,” and that his in- 
tention was “to allow 
the imagination to pre- 
dominate.” The picture 
with its well chosen in- 
gredients and the unity 
and completeness of its 
mood well illustrates 
Inness’ progress toward 
his ultimate rich sim- 
plicity and toward the 
mastery of forms which 
he felt “at his finger- 
tips.” 


116 From the painting Sunset in the Woods in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 


year =i 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 79 


CONSUMMATION 


A rew of Inness’ latest 
pictures showa survival of 
his earlier sense of struc- 
ture and actuality amid 
his final coruscations. 
These are possibly his 
greatest pictures, and 
After a Summer Shower 
seems to the present writer 
one of them. In contrast 
with the fantastic bright- 
ness of much of his late 
color, this rests on ob- 
served facts. In all of 
his late painting Inness 
worked from memory and 
very rapidly, often paint- 
ing one picture upon an- 


other. The flimsiness of 


much of the work must be 
set against its facility and 


117 


eos 


From the painting After @ Summer Shower in the Art Institute of Chicago 


power. He seems at times to have painted faster than he thought. However, his improvisations are more 


valuable than many painters’ thoughts. 


ALEXANDER HELWIG WYANT, N.A., S.A.A. 


A. H. Wyant is a landscapist of much narrower range, but within it a true artist. He was born at Port 
Washington, Ohio, in 1836 and died at New York in 1892. As a young man he sought the aid of Inness and 
later was a pupil of Hans Gude at Karlsruhe. Wyant was a landscapist of intimate and wistful feeling, who, 
while holding to the low key of the times, made his handling count for luminosity. His early intimate pictures 
of Adirondack brooks, forests and clearings nicely complement the more grandiose and panoramic views of 
Homer Martin’s early years. Wyant is perhaps the best minor landscapist that America has produced. 


118 From the painting Mohawk Valley in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


Ses £3 


80 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WYANT AS A REALIST 


Passine from the metallic manner of the pre- 
ceding picture, which he had taken from the 
Hudson River school and his master, Hans 
Gude, Wyant in his last twenty years achieved 
a silvery, unified and atmospheric style drawn 
in part from the Barbizon masters. It is 
nowhere better illustrated than in the ex- 
quisite picture here reproduced. Such can- 
vases, with their delicate melancholy, speak 
of a long heroic struggle with invalidism and 
neglect. It should be added that, unlike 
Inness, Wyant never invented his composi- 
tions but found them in nature. Thus he is 
actually truer to the quietly realistic tradi- 
tion which tends to pervade all genuinely 
American art. 


HOMER DODGE MARTIN, N.A., 


BETWEEN the exuberance of Inness and the 
pensive quietism of Wyant, Homer Dodge 
Martin occupies a middle ground. Born 
at Albany, New York, in 1836, he died at 
St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1897. He was be- 
friended by the venerable sculptor Erastus 
Dow Palmer and was for a brief space a pupil 
of James Hart at Albany, but he was chiefly 
self-trained by sketching in the Adirondacks 
and White Mountains. In his love for wild 
scenery Martin continued ably the tradition 
of Cole and in his early years made himself 
the best landscapist of purely native training that America had produced. For a moment represented by 
this picture of 1870, Martin intelligently assimilated the crisp and incisive touch of Kensett (No. 71), turning 
it, however, to serve his own nobly melancholy mood. 


119 From the painting An Old Clearing in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


yO . < . pe ner 


120 From the painting Lake Sanford in the possession of the Century Association, New York 


adds a consummate 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 81 


121 From the painting Andante — Fifth Symphony in the possession of the’ Malcolm MacMartin estate, New York 


MARTIN MOVES TOWARD BREADTH 


Martin’s style after a visit to England in the middle ’seventies broadened and grew more urbane. He had 
met Whistler and seen the Constables. Ever a lover of music, he felt an analogy between Beethoven’s Fifth 
Symphony and the broadening of a stream into a tranquil, shimmering pool. The result was this lovely har- 
mony in russets and silvers — the most exquisite canvas s executed by Martin before his sojourn in France and 
his contact with the newer landscapists. 


MARTIN’S MORE ATMOSPHERIC MANNER 


In France, from 1882 to 1886, mostly at Villerville in Normandy, Martin renewed his study of light, and by 
a finer and more skillful division of his low tones attained greater luminosity. The canvases executed in 
France, The Old Manor 
House, Honfleur Light, 
The Mussel Gatherers, are 
permeated with a noble 
and poetical sadness to 
which the present picture 


gracefulness of composi- 
tion. This quiet remaking 
of Martin’s style in amore 
modern fashion was chiefly 
his own deed, but it is 
probable that he had 
consulted the luminous 
canvases of the transi- 
tional French painter, 
Boudin, who was then 
working at Havre near 
Honfleur, Martin’s home 
in Normandy. 


122 From the painting Harp of the S Winds: a View on the Seine in the Metropolitan 
Museum of "Art, New York 


82 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


50% eee 


123 From the painting Westchester Hills in the possession of Daniel Guggenheim, New York, 
photograph by courtesy of M. Knoedler & Co. 


THE FULFILLMENT OF MARTIN’S GENIUS 


In Martin’s last ten years, years of poverty, neglect and impending blindness, he painted some of his finest 
pictures, no longer working from nature but from memory, often aided by old sketches or former pictures. 
Here nothing is finer than Westchester Hills, unless it be Samuel Untermyer’s even more tragic masterpiece, 
The Adirondacks. Martin held that in every picture there is something of a story, and being told that this 
was impossible in the case of his Westchester Hills he answered: “Don’t you see the family has gone West along 
that road?” Doubtless this was partly a joke, but it represents the highly intellectualized character of 
Martin’s painting. His mood was very close to that of Bryant’s Thanatopsis and A Winter Piece. 

Our three great American landscapists, Inness, Wyant and Martin may also be regarded as fulfillers of 
the imaginative tradition created by Thomas Cole (Nos. 66, 67). In the work of carrying forward an Ameri- 
can tradition they consulted whatever European precedent might seem helpful. They found American 
landscape in a somewhat provincial estate, and they left it on a level with all but the best European practice. 


124 From the painting Camp Meeting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE, N.A., P.N.A. 


WortHineton WHITTREDGE was older than Inness, Wyant and Martin and, apart from being an excellent 
landscapist, is interesting as showing the general trend towara a better practice. He was born in 1820, near 
Springfield, Ohio, and died in 1910 at Summit, New Jersey. He studied with James H. Beard at New York 
and Andreas Achenbach at Diisseldorf. He visited the Far West and painted there such big canvases as 
Platte River, in the Century Association, New York, in the manner of the heroic landscape school. Later he 
preferred those intimate scenes which were more proper to his gentle nature, painting brooks and wood 
interiors with felicity. Occasionally, Whittredge achieves a bewitching loveliness as in this picture. A minor 
artist, he was of fine fiber. 


THE GREAT 


WINSLOW HOMER, 
N.A. 


Wrnstow Homer was the 
most powerful painter 
America has produced, 
and perhaps the most 
important. He represents 
the culmination of that 
strain of sound realism 
which was announced by 
Stuart and Neagle in 
portraiture and by Du- 
rand in landscape, but 
Homer’s realism is more 
simplified and_ stylistic. 
He began with illustra- 
tion and that able genre 
painting which we have 
already considered (No. 
80). From 1876 Winslow 
Homer painted chiefly 


From the painting A Summer Night in the 


LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 83 


Luxembourg Gallery, Paris 


the forest and the sea, living at Prout’s Neck, Maine, where his great theme was ever before him. A Summer 
Night, painted in 1880 and eventually bought by the French Government, gives the gentler pulse of the ocean 
according with a dance on shore, contrasting with the harshly powerful accent of the other marines. (See also 


Nos. 420, 498, 506.) 


126 From the painting Cannon Rock in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


HOMER’S EPIC OF 
THE SEA 


Homer is never greater than 
in these pictures which repre- 
sent a pounding sea gnawing 
at the foot of the cliffs. There 
are many such and choice 
among them is difficult. One 
of the most accessible has 
been chosen in order that the 
reader may be induced to go 
and feel its elemental power. 
Except for a few canvases by 
Courbet, which Homer proba- 
bly knew, there is nothing in 
modern painting comparable 
in energy to the series of 
marines to which this belongs. 
Fortunately many are in 
public museums. No one can 
see them without some en- 
hancement of his own vitality. 
Especially will he feel in- 
debted to one who has so 
nobly transferred to canvas 
the rugged grandeur of our 
scenery. 


84 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ee 


127 From the painting Hound and Hunter in the possession of Louis Ettlinger, New York, 
photograph by courtesy of M. Knoedler & Co. 


FOREST LIFE IN WINSLOW HOMER 


A HUNTER and fisherman, Homer left many records of these sturdy sports in which the emphasis becomes 
fairly tragic. One of the best is this little picture, which, with considerable improvement in composition, is 
based on a water-color sketch. This and many 
of the pictures concerning sailors and fishermen 
might well be considered as genre painting. 
But I have preferred not to break up the in- 
tegrity of Winslow Homer’s great outdoor 
epic, while in all these figure pieces the en- 
vironment of forest or sea, whether visible or 
divined, is quite as important as the figures 
themselves. 


HIS MASTERPIECE — THE LOOKOUT 


Sucu is the case with the great picture The 
' Lookout — “‘ All’s Well” where the crest of the 
rolling wave dimly seen tells the whole story 
of the perilous vastness of the deep. The pic- 
ture is an epitome of the simple heroism of 
those who ply the sea in little ships. It is in 
its frosty, luminous blues most beautifully 
painted, and an exception in the general raw- 
ness of Homer’s later work in oils. Similar 
works are Eight Bells and Banks Fishermen. 
In this phase Homer is a true revealer of the 
deep if humble poetry of the seaman’s life. 
In literature Herman Melville and Richard 
Henry Dana had anticipated the theme, but 
it was a new note in painting, and a thoroughly 
American note. It seems strange that the 
fisherman who for some three centuries has 
é been plying his trade from the American coast 


128 From the painting sb Per ne een in the Museum should wait so long for his artist. 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 85 


THE TROPICS IN WATER COLOR 


NEVER quite facile in oils, Homer commanded in 
his swift water-color sketches an extraordinary 
power and dexterity with great force of color. 
Nothing more complete or accomplished has been 
achieved in the medium. These sketches are 
largely products of his old age when he often 
passed the winter in the Bahamas. The subjects 
are very various: fishing scenes, hunting scenes, 
studies of boats and always the wind-driven sea. 


THE CONSUMMATE WATER-COLORIST 


Tue full energy of Homer is expressed in such 
sketches as No. 130, his extreme audacity and 
simplicity of approach; and the color is of a 
beauty quite rare in his oil paintings. In Winslow 
Homer we have an art relatively free from Euro- 
pean influences, seeking breadth of effect 
through knowledge and subsequent elimination, 
achieving style on a basis of keenest observation 
of reality. His success really closes our realistic 
chapter, and ends one of our fundamental tradi- 
tions, for no successor is likely to surpass him with 
the same program. Indeed his closest successor, 
Rockwell Kent (No. 262), has infused his even 
more simplified realism with suggestions of sym- 
bolism. Homer’s popularity has no doubt been 
due in part to a new love of nature, like that of 


Burroughs and Muir, which has become a 2 sagt ae RR Pe ae : kil 
characteristic of twentieth-century America. TAOO Ne feta ee ore ete th et Dae ee 


. 
a 


130 From the water color Shore and Surf, Nassau, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


86 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM GEDNEY 
BUNCE, N.A. 


WE breathe a thinner but 
exquisite air in the paint- 
ing of William Gedney 
Bunce. In a way he may 
be regarded as a less ver- 
satile Whistler who has 
come out into the day- 
light, or as a European- 
ized and _ better-trained 
Blakelock. Bunce was 
born at Hartford, Con- 
necticut, in 1840 and died 
at New York in 1916. 
His apprenticeship was 
uncommonly long, for he 
was a pupil of Cooper 
Union, of William Morris 
Hunt, of Achenbach in 
Diisseldorf and of Clays at 
Antwerp. Bunce was 
chiefly influenced by this 
last painter whose gray-blue tonalities he further developed in unities of gold and russet. He lived most 
of his life in Venice, rendering its panoramas in his favorite color scheme. A sensitive artist, his single 
diligently cultivated gift of exquisite tonality is likely to keep him in memory. 


S ees 


131 From the painting Early Morning, Venice, in the M 


BAR eh MS ie - eee 
etropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


CHARLES HAROLD 
DAVIS, N.A., S.A.A. 


Amone American painters 
who have continued In- 
ness’ quest of luminosity 
without his mysticism and 
have practiced his boldly 
broken color for realistic 
effect none is more dis- 
tinguished than Charles 
Harold Davis. Born at 
Mystic, Connecticut, in 
1856, he was a pupil of 
Otto Grundmann and the 
Boston Museum school, of 
Boulanger and Lefebvre in 
Paris. He has always 
painted near his native 
place, interpreting the 
moors and pastures of the 
Connecticut shore region 
with a delicate regard for 
lighting and atmosphere. 

In Davis’ early work there is uniform somberness, and, in the manner of the French, concentration on the 
details of nature. At this time he was considered a painter of beautiful clouds. His artistic development 
may be traced in a growing brilliance and vibrancy of color, in a broader emphasis of the moods of nature, 
and in an increasing interest in the earth and its forms. As old age progresses, his touch becomes only more 
sensitive and sure. 


aes 


132 : From the painting August in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 87 


WILLIAM LANGSON 
LATHROP, N.A. 


In William Langson Lathrop 
we find a somewhat gentler 
and less brilliant talent with 
its own charm of lucidity, 
simplicity and _ directness. 
Lathrop was born at Warren, 
Illinois, in 1859 and is self- 
taught. Without adopting 
the Impressionist palette and 
handling, he has steadily 
advanced in the just notation 
of light and landscape, only 
gaining, as he ages, in fresh- 
ness and charm. He has 
never cared to wander far 
from his home at New Hope, 
Pennsylvania, in the Dela- 
ware valley. His is a candid 
and modest talent in many 
ways akin to that of John 
Constable 


133 From the painting The 7'ow-Path in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington 


BEN FOSTER, N.A., S.A.A. 


SOMETHING of the dignity and reticence of the New England spirit inspires the landscapes of Ben Foster, who 
was born at North Anson, Maine, in 1852 and died at New York in 1925. A pupil of Abbott H. Thayer in 
New York, and of Morot 
and Merson in Paris, he 
developed into a landscape 
painter of sober and _ fine 
compositional feeling, inter- 
preting the hill scenery of the 
Connecticut Berkshires with 
a quiet and somewhat austere 
sentiment which one is 
tempted to call Wordsworth- 
ian. Aside from his painting, 
he was an art critic of distine- 
tion, serving for several years 
in that capacity on the New 
York Evening Post. Amid 
much more showy and tech- 
nically brilliant landscapes, 
his bring the refreshment that 
a poem of Bryant’s affords 
after a surfeit of imagist verse. 
Few painters have more fully 
captured the pensive aspect 
of our early autumns. 


iG 


134 From the painting Late Autumn Moonrise in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 


88 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


135 From the painting Afternoon Light on the Hills in the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh 


JOHN FRANCIS 
MURPHY, N.A., S.A.A. 


AFTER a Ben Foster, a 
landscape by John Fran- 
cis Murphy would, look a 
little superficial, just as 
after one of Inness’ corus- 
cating mysticisms it would 
look a little tame and 
possibly sentimental. 
Apart from such odious 
comparisons, it would 
seem charmingly colored, 
decoratively composed 
and invested with a slight 
but genuine poetry. Mur- 
phy was born in 1853 at 
Oswego, New York, and 
died at New York in 1921. 
Self-taught as a landscape 


painter, he preferred subdued light, rich color and highly simplified composition. His art is ever in danger 
of becoming merely rich surfaces, but his discretion kept a reasonable verisimilitude in a manner chiefly 
decorative. He is at his best in his little canvases of the ’nineties rather than in the big panoramic views 
that later won him fame and success. His work so much corresponds to the average conservative taste of 
his times that it has a historical value aside from its possibly rather slender value as art. 


LEONARD OCHTMAN, N.A., S.A.A. 


Luminosity in landscape depends largely on richly manipulated surfaces. In this respect few contemporary 
American landscapists equal Leonard Ochtman. Born at Zonnemaire, Holland, in 1859, he was brought to 
Albany, New York, in 1866. He is a self-taught landscapist, painting mostly in Connecticut. He represents 
her upland pastures under gray skies, bringing out from sober tones, skillfully manipulated, extraordinary 
effects of luminosity. In the present picture one feels the dew everywhere trapping the early sunbeams. 


136 


THE GREAT LANDSCAPE SCHOOL, 1865-1895 89 


137 From the painting Near the Coast in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


ES Bees 


ROBERT SWAIN GIFFORD, N.A. 


AGAIN the quiet satisfaction given by an entirely appropriate technique is the attractive note in the work 
of Robert Swain Gifford. Born in 1840, at Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, he died at New York in 1905. He 
painted mostly the boulder-strewn hills about Buzzards Bay, with a fine sense for the larger forms, in a rich 
if subdued color. His first teacher was Albert van Beest, an old Dutch marine painter who had settled 
nearby Gifford’s home. Van Beest’s interest was aroused quite by accident. One day he discovered Gifford 
attempting to portray the rugged outline of the coast. He volunteered to share the benefit of his own training 
and technical knowledge. Gifford learned much from him, and then departed for a long tour on which he 
made many engravings. With a strong sense of the substance of things, Gifford combined emphatic structure 


and a rich color in the old 
low key. His was a sterling 
talent, and for years he was a 
faithful teacher at the Cooper 
Union, New York. 


DE WITT PARSHALL, 
N.A. 


Tue old western themes of the 
Heroic school reappear on a 
more reasonable scale and in a 
more modern and pondered 
coloring in the work of De Witt 
Parshall. Born at Buffalo, 
New York, in 1864, he was 
successively under the in- 
struction of Cormon, Alex- 
ander Harrison and the Julian 
Academy at Paris. He has 
made himself a landscapist of 
thoughtful and sober talent 
who has been peculiarly suc- 
cessful in capturing something 
of the grandeur of our Western 
mountains. 


138 From the painting Hermit Creek Canyon in the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass, 


90 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


FREDERICK JUDD 
WAUGH, N.A. 


TuHE tradition of Winslow 
Homer has been con- 
tinued by Frederick Judd 
Waugh. He was born at 
Bordentown, New Jersey, 
in 1861 and studied at the 
Pennsylvania Academy 
and at Julian’s in Paris. 
Waugh is an extraordi- 
nary draftsman of the 
forms of waves, an ex- 
cellent painter in water 
colors. His absorption in 
the sea became fixed dur- 
ing his residence in the 
Channel Islands, and 
since then he has con- 
centrated on disciplining 
me his eye to analyze the 
sed Z aie " aS eee §=varying colors and masses 
139 From the painting The Roaring Forties in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York of w ater, an d on forcin g 
his memory to recreate before his canvas a perfect reconstruction of these observations. He still fails often- 
times to unify his analyses or to convey in the texture of his oils the vibrancy of nature, which he emulates. 
His power tends to be centrifugal, and the thematic tonality of green and blue monotonous. 


ABBOTT HANDERSON THAYER, N.A., S.A.A. 


AgBBott HanpERSON THAYER is best known as a figure painter and portraitist, but if quality is the test his 
few landscapes entitle him to rank among our finest landscapists. He was born at Boston in 1849 and died 
at Monadnock, New Hampshire, in 1922. A pupil of Géréme, at Paris, a portrait and figure painter of great 
nobility, he soon abandoned the French style for a rugged manner of his own. Few American landscapes 
rise to the austerity and grandeur of Thayer’s noble study of that great mountain under which he passed 
most of his life, and from the summit 
of which he directed his ashes to. be 
flung. Free from foreign formulas, it 
closes splendidly the native chapter 
of American landscape. The kind of 
landscape which we have considered in 
this chapter has been largely super- 
seded by landscapes painted with a 
brighter palette in the Impressionist 
fashion. However, the new style has 
on the whole produced fewer great 
pictures. Perhaps the compromise 
with tradition made by our great school 
was really wiser than was the relentless 
quest of rarities of illumination by the 
new school. And the superiority of the 
old school would be greatly emphasized 
by transferring to its chapter the 
marines and landscapes of Albert P. 
Ryder, which have been separately 
considered. (See also No. 159.) 


«Nee 


140 From the painting Monadnock in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


CHAPTER XTFI 


PORTRAITISTS OF PARISIAN TENDENCY, 1876- 


ARLY in the history of the National Academy, the first president, S. F. B. Morse, 
warned his pupils that if they pursued their studies abroad they would return to 
a country that, being without sympathy with their foreign tastes, would ignore 
them. He had verified the fact in his own experience, and his prophecy has been many 
times fulfilled. ‘The case arose in its most acute form when the ambitious young painters 
who followed the great Parisian teachers in the early ’seventies returned to America. 
Such men as Kenyon Cox, Abbott H. Thayer, Will Low, Carroll Beckwith, George de 
Forest Brush, Frank Benson, Tarbell and Dewing had learned well what Paris could 
teach, having mastered the brilliant exhibitionistic methods of such painters as Gérome, 
Cabanel, Boulanger, Carolus-Duran; Chase, Duveneck and Shirlaw had made equivalent 
_ studies at Munich. The new men were rightly’ conscious that they painted far better 
than the old N.A.’s., but, as Morse had predicted, they were unable either to sell their 
pictures or even to exhibit them properly. 

The new-rich American public that eagerly bought whatever Paris and Munich 
offered had no use for the American imitations. The walls of the old Academy were 
overfilled by pictures of the native school, which from the point of view of the new men 
were not painted at all. Some of their fellows at Paris foresaw the situation — Alexander 
Harrison, John S. Sargent, Walter Gay, Jules Stewart, William L. Dannat, Julian Story, 
and, casting in their lot with Europe, declined the ordeal of home-coming. Those who 
came back soon banded in behalf of a better professionalism, and the Society of American 
Artists, founded in 1877, was the result. For the thirty-five years of its existence, the 
S.A.A. was the most distinguished exhibiting body in New York, and time won its fight 
for it. By 1902 the older N.A.’s were mostly dead, and their hanging space available; 
the Academy itself was much liberalized, and even the public had learned that Titian 
and Velasquez were better painters than Tadema, Bouguereau and Meyer von Bremen. 
So the old Academy absorbed the Society on generous terms. 

Reviewing the controversy, the new men seem both right and wrong — right in that 
they represented a better practice, wrong in that they mostly offered pictures fitted for 
exhibition purposes in Paris, but which no American could reasonably be expected to buy. 
Some of them really had very little to say, and naturally failed to realize their apparent 
promise. Those who had much to say, like Alden Weir and Abbott Thayer, had to 
learn their French methods. In short, while these ambitious young men had sought the 
best training the moment offered, it was by no means suitable for the work they actually 
had to do in America. 

At least the founders of the S.A.A. succeeded in creating a scorn for indifferent paint- 
ing and a taste for fine painting. They were the efficient teachers of the best painters of 
to-day, making it unnecessary to seek European training except for general culture, and 
rendering a repetition of their own dilemma more unlikely. Their pioneer service in 
behalf of higher professional standards was indispensable, and if they overestimated the 
worth of brilliant professionalism, which is merely the condition and not the cause of 
great art, the times and the unfair opposition they met made that error as pardonable 
as it was inevitable. 

XII—7 91 


92 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


141 From the painting The Return of the Prodigal Son 


in the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris 


GUSTAVE HENRY MOSLER 


Among the new fine painters, Henry Mosler 
first: received the honor of purchase by the 
French Government. He was born at New 
York in 1841, and died there in 1920. 
Beginning as a pupil of James H. Beard at 
Cincinnati, he studied also at Diisseldorf, 
Paris and Munich. Mosler sought the 
picturesque in European peasant life, re- 
ceived many foreign honors and is repre- 
sented in numerous museums. This picture, 
the first American painting to be bought 
by the French Government, though over- 
elaborate and somewhat theatrical in quality, 
is what was expected for exhibition pur- 
poses in Paris. It reveals the atmosphere 
of unreality to which our Paris-trained 
students were subjected. 


FRANCIS DAVIS MILLET, N.A. 


GENRE painting on American themes on the 
rather large scale required for big exhibition 
was skillfully practiced by Francis D. Millet. 
He was born in 1846 at Mattapoisett, 
Massachusetts; and went down with the 
Titanic in 1912. Millet became a pupil of 
the Royal Academy of Arts at Antwerp, 
and was one of the first Americans to apply 


to genre painting the new European refinements of lighting and color. He was most serviceable in organizing 
mural painting in America, especially at the Chicago Exposition of 1893, putting as much of his gentle and 
efficient personality into such work of management and adjustment for others as he did into his own painting. 
The genre painting of the years after the Civil War reflected more and more clearly a new and changing 
civilization, that of the great city, and its causes the great corporation and the machine. 


142 From the painting The Window Seat in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


PORTRAITISTS OF PARISIAN TENDENCY, 1876- 93 


FRANK DUVENECK, N.A., S.A.A. 


For power and gusto none of the European- 
trained painters excelled Frank Duveneck. He 
was born at Covington, Kentucky, in 1848, 
and died at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1919, having 
in the meantime won international renown. 
He may be best regarded as a continuer with new 
resources of the native realistic tradition. <A 
pupil of Diez at Munich, where he lived more than 
ten years, he was a portraitist and figure painter 
with a power and richness suggestive of the great 
Dutch Masters. His vivid and athletic outlook 
on life made him an ideal teacher. One of our 
strongest painters of the figure, he was inci- 
dentally one of our best etchers. The Art 
Museum of his native city contains no less than 
one hundred and sixty-five of his works, the 
most impressive memorial that has been dedi- 
cated to any American artist. In all this work is 
a precious quality of vitality. Duveneck was 
always sure of his affair and free from lapses of 
temperament — working with the confident ath- 
leticism of the old masters. Of the many Amer- 
ican painters who adopted the new European 
technique only the more intelligent Thomas 
Eakins seems Duveneck’s superior. (See also 
No. 434.) 


144 From the portrait of William Cullen Bryant in the Brooklyn 


Museum, Brooklyn 


From the painting The Whistling Boy in the Cincinnati Museum 


Association, Cincinnati 


WYATT EATON, S.A.A. 

No one who has seen Wyatt Eaton’s portraits 
of Lincoln, Longfellow, Emerson, and Bryant 
is likely to forget them. They have a very 
definite seriousness and nobility. Eaton was 
born in Philipsburg, Canada, in 1849 and died 
at Brooklyn in 1896. His life had been a hard 
one, for his thoughtfulness set him apart from 
the old school while he lacked the technical 
brilliancy of the new school. He was a pupil 
of the National Academy school, of J.O. Eaton 
and of Géréme in Paris, and was profoundly 
influenced by association with Millet. As a 
master of portraiture and of the ideal nude, 
he had a gravity quite uncommon among his 
contemporaries. He may be regarded as a 
continuer of the _ intellectualized manner 
inaugurated by Allston and more fully realized 
by William Page. “In my studio,” writes 
Eaton in his Letters, “Bryant’s head came out 
against the background with wonderful pic- 
turesqueness. JI had never had such a 
model.... He seemed very old, not eighty- 
four but a hundred or two hundred or three 
hundred, and I felt myself as much a stranger 
to him at the end of the sittings as I had on 
our first meeting.” 


94 


146 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


145 From the portrait of Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


KENYON COX, N.A., S.A.A. 


Kenyon Cox is an excellent example of a powerful spirit both aided and cramped by the training of the 
Paris schools. He had worked so strenuously at the parts of pictures that he had dulled his vision of wholes. 
All the same he had a distinguished talent, and through his painting, teaching, writing and service on juries 
became one of the most influential artists of his day. Born at Warren, Ohio, in 1856, Cox died at New York 
in 1919. He studied with Carolus-Duran and Géréme at Paris and soon became the chief representative of 


eed 


From the painting The Authoress in the Buffalo Fine 
Arts Academy, Buffalo 


the French academic ideal among us as a portrait, figure 
and mural painter. This admirable portrait of the artist’s 
neighbor and friend is a fine record of our greatest Amer- 
ican sculptor, and an excellent example as well of Cox’s 
probity and incisiveness in portraiture. As a writer, Cox 
was one of the ablest conservative critics of his day. 
(See also Nos. 160, 182.) 


JAMES CARROLL BECKWITH, N.A., S.A.A. 
For the brilliancy and vivacity of his technique J. Carroll 
Beckwith made an early impression which gradually faded 
as it was found that the wittiness of his method was 
repetitious. Born at Hannibal, Missouri, in 1852, Beck- 
with was a docile pupil of Carolus-Duran and of the 
Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He rarely attained the vitality 
of this fine head of the ’eighties, but by his efforts as a 
teacher and the verve of his portraiture, he kept alive the 
Beaux-Arts tradition beyond the natural term. The work 
reproduced explains his leadership and influence among 
the new men of the ’eighties. He was prodigiously clever 
at a moment when cleverness was in demand. At the 
time of his death at New York, in 1917, his prestige had 
diminished with that of the Beaux-Arts school. 


PORTRAITISTS OF PARISIAN TENDENCY, 1876- 95 


GEORGE DE FOREST BRUSH, 
N.A. 

GxoRGE DE Forest Brusi is one of the 
few painters of this moment who, re- 
taining the French style, has given it an 
American application. Brush was born 
at Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1855. He 
was a favorite pupil of Géréme in Paris, 
and shared his master’s love of a 
scrupulously accurate linear drafts- 
manship, which he has applied almost 
exclusively to figure subjects and ideal 
portraiture. This is one of the firm and 
elegant studies Which Brush made after 
his return from Paris in the ’eighties. 
Similar pictures are Leda and Mourning 
her Brave. Such work was criticized 
for its foreign accent, but its superiority 
over the old figure painting was too 
manifest to be long ignored. And these 
early pictures were in demand among 
our most discerning amateurs of the 
*nineties. Brush’s studies of the Indian 
have helped to establish the redskin in 
an important place in the art history 
of America. 


148 _ From the painting Mother and Child in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


George Woodward, Philadelphia 


THE FAMILY 
PICTURES 


In his maturity Brush has 
devoted himself to ideal 
portraiture and to figure 
groups. For the latter he 
has usually studied his 
own family. These groups 
are worked out thought- 
fully through years of much 
reflection and_ successive 
enrichment. In later years 
his style has become freer 
and more individual under 
the influence of the Italian 
painters of the fifteenth 
century, whose work he has 
studied enthusiastically 
during long residence in 
Florence. Brush’s work has 
its own accent of ideality. 
In its research of form 
through line it is akin to 
the earlier and finer work 
of Vanderlyn under David’s 
leading (No. 28). 


96 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THOMAS EAKINS, N.A. 


Tur most austere and powerful portraitist and figure 
painter of his time in America, with no rival except 
Duveneck, whom he surpassed in penetration and in- 
tellectual tenacity, Thomas Eakins’ calm and intuitive 
vision made him also a fine genre painter, and his few 
pictures of this sort were among the best of his age. In 
this phase we have already considered him (Nos. 84-5). A 
reserved nature and a severe master, he gave the public 
his teaching and his pictures, otherwise wrapping himself 
in the dignity and privacy of his impeccable art. The 
intensity of his vision and insight are beyond the average 
observer’s powers to imitate or even to grasp, hence his 
portraiture has never been popular, and is not likely to 
be so. But his fame has steadily risen among his fellow- 
painters and the critics. The Thinker, painted in 1900, 
is a study of contemporary life reflecting an age when the 
man in the office is the dominant figure. 


149 From the painting The Thinker in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE, N.A., S.A.A. 


In the somewhat difficult task of popularizing the exotic 
Beaux-Arts style in America, William M. Chase (see No. 226 
for portrait) both by his painting and teaching was especially 
influential. He had a sense of what the public wanted and 
made himself a fabulously picturesque studio in New York; 
yet with all his cosmopolitan exterior he retained all of his 
Middle-Western mother wit. Chase was born at Franklin, 
Indiana, in 1849 and died in 1916. After brief studies in 
Indianapolis and New York, he passed under the instruction 
of Wagner and Piloty at Munich. He soon became a virtuoso 
of dextrous construction with a broad brush, readily applying 
his technique to landscapes and interiors, but especially to 
portraiture. Often he gives the impression of being more 
interested in his own skill than in the things he paints. For 
years he was a popular teacher, and an example of sound and 
brilliant if not very penetrating professionalism. His still 
lifes are, barring a handful of fine portraits, perhaps his best 
work. (See also No. 188.) 


150 From the portrait A Lady in Black in the Metro- 
politan Museum of Art, New York 


PORTRAITISTS OF PARISIAN TENDENCY, 1876- 97 


151 From the painting A Quartette in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


WILLIAM T. DANNAT, N.1A.L. 


Many foreign-trained painters have declined, perhaps prudently, to take their European accomplishments 
home. Such is the brilliant W. T. Dannat, who was born at New York in 1853. A pupil of the Munich 
Academy and of Munkacsy, he has worked chiefly in Paris. Dannat has force, brilliancy and humor — 
qualities which make him an ideal artist for the creation of Salon pictures. His reputation in Paris was 
established by such paintings as A Quartette and Contrabandier Aragonais, which captured so realistically the 
spirit of Spain. Then for a number of years he dropped his painting dissatisfied with its fraility and surface 
pleasingness. When his interest was again aroused, it took the form of antiquarian analytical research. He 
secured paintings of Velasquez and Rubens, and by years of judicious examination convinced himself that he 
had mastered the essential secret of their color and texture and brushwork. His conception of the proper 
place of nature in painting had also changed. It was no longer a model, exacting slavish reproduction, but to 
the mind of the creative observer only a suggestion of forms and color patterns, with which to clothe his own 
subjective conception. The character of these later paintings is altogether different — a solitary Courier on a 
barren rolling plain, or a darkish lake with a Swan, or the six panels of the legend of La Belle au Bois Dormant 
with their Claudian background of great columns, covered with trailing vines. 


CHAPTER ext 
MURAL PAINTING 


MI: painting developed tardily among us, although it was usual in the na- 


tions that set our artistic fashions — England. and France. One may only 
speculate as to the causes for this neglect. In part, it may have been the 
hurry of our life. A public building was regarded chiefly as a place of business. Nobody 
wanted to look at pictures there. Then art was regarded as having its own restricted 
territory — in parlors and galleries. Add to this that most of our painters before 1876 
were incapable of designing and executing a great decorative panel — and we have the 
beginning of ‘an explanation. So in the first seventy-five years or so mural decoration 
hardly went beyond insetting landscapes. over a fireplace, or in the frieze of a parlor car 
or saloon of an excursion steamer. The decoration of the Capitol at Washington which 
began in 1824 is really no exception. There was nothing decorative about the big can- 
vases of Trumbull, Vanderlyn, and Robert W. Weir in the rotunda, nor yet in Leutze’s 
Westward the Star of Empire takes its Way nearby. When it came to decorating the new 
dome in 1855, inevitably an Italian, the political refugee Constantino Brumidi, was called 
in. He furnished a respectable attenuation of the Renaissance style. It is doubtful if 
any contemporary American — Morse having retired — could have done the work at all. 
The real beginning of our school of native mural painting follows the marked improve- 
ment of our architecture under French training in the ’seventies, and such architects as 
Richardson, Hunt, McKim, Post and Cass Gilbert have been the foremost encouragers 
of the movement. When in 1876 Henry H. Richardson called the promising young land- 
scapist and illustrator, John La Farge, to decorate the vast spaces of Trinity Church at 
Boston, he showed an extraordinary prophetic insight. La Farge with Francis Lathrop 
as his chief assistant summoned a band of eager young painters, and under his direction 
they completed the work within six months. A couple of years later Richardson called 
La Farge’s former master, William Morris Hunt, to decorate the vaulted ceiling in the 
new capitol at Albany. The ‘nineties saw a great acceleration of mural painting. Within 
this decade falls the decoration of the Appellate Court, New York, the notable murals at 
the Columbian Exposition, 1893, Will Low’s and Blashfield’s Waldorf ballroom, New 
York; the entire decoration of the Library of Congress, and the beginning of that of the 
Boston Public Library; Robert Blum’s panels for Mendelssohn Hall, New York. This 
brilliant spurt was more steadily maintained in the present century. 

There remains the difficult task of appraising the entire movement. As a whole it 
still offers more promise than accomplishment. Yet the best walls of La Farge, Vedder, 
Abbey, Simmons and Reid compare very favorably with similar work done in Europe 
within the same years. We have not yet produced a Puvis or a Besnard, but we have 
furnished good seconds to them. Indeed we are still at the beginning of things, only 
- recently having available men primarily trained in decoration. Such veterans as Blash- 
field, Cox, Turner and Simmons had first to unlearn an alien style. Their success under the 
conditions is remarkable. Our mural painting calls neither for apology nor yet for extrava- 
gant praise. It is socially the most useful of movements, improving the public taste by the 
most legitimate methods, and bridging over that unhappy gulf between artist and layman 
which has ever been the sorest handicap with which American art has had to contend. 

98 


JOHN LA FARGE, N.A., S.A.A. 


Our story really begins with the 
first artistically successful decora- 
tion of a great interior, that of 
Trinity Church, Boston, by John 
La Farge and his associates. In 
1876, La Farge received the com- 
mission from MHenry Hobson 
Richardson. The work included 
the whole interior ornament and a 
few colossal figure compositions of 
which this picture is one. As 
helpers there were summoned Mil- 
let, Maynard, Lathrop and Cox, 
among others, who later became 
mural painters themselves. It was 
the first great mural series in 
America executed under one man 
and in sound taste—the begin- 
ning of the great movement in 
‘monumental decoration which has 
followed. This picture is his own 
smaller version of the wall paint- 
ing at Boston. (See also Nos. 108- 
10, 186, 187, 220-21, 419, 496, 499.) 


HIS THEORY OF MURAL 
PAINTING 


Unurce his successors, La Farge 
made relatively little difference 
between the easel picture and the 
mural painting, believing that both 


MURAL PAINTING 99 


152 From the sketch for the mural painting Christ and Nicodemus in Trinity Church, 
Boston, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. © Curtis & Cameron 


should be fully realized and rich in color. This was the practice of the Venetians and of Delacroix. In this 
great lunette painted about 1893, La Farge asserted these principles and confirmed the fame gained from 
the decoration of Trinity Church. We choose it rather than one of the later decorations in the state capitol 
at St. Paul, which are at once of a more reflective and impassioned quality, because it represents the artist’s 


essential classicism. 


153 From the mural painting Athens in the Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me. 


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MURAL PAINTING 101 


155 From the mural decoration The Flight of Night in the state capitol, Albany, N. Y. © Curtis & Cameron 


WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT 

Hunt, as dean of the Paris-trained Americans, was naturally called in when Richardson was finishing the 
state capitol at Albany, New York. Hunt executed the two great mythologies, The Flight of Night and 
The Barque of the Discoverer with the energetic pomp which he had mastered at the Beaux-Arts. A versatile 
talent in portraiture, landscape, figure and mural painting but supreme in none, Hunt was a vital and restless 
spirit whose full expression in art was frustrated by unfavorable times and circumstances. His ceiling 
decorations at Albany were early ruined because the ceiling was badly constructed, but the applause they had 
justly evoked furthered the cause of mural painting. (See also Nos. 102, 458.) 


HENRY OLIVER WALKER, N.A., S.A.A. 

Tue great advance in mural decoration was made between 1890 and 1900. The Appellate Court in New York 
and the Library of Congress were the first public buildings fully decorated and on a consistent scheme. 
In these developments Henry O. Walker was prominent. His unfailing popularity did much to confirm the new 
desire for monumental decoration. Walker, born at Boston in 1843, was a pupil of Bonnat. His decorations 
are in the Appellate Court, New York, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts State House, the Essex 
County Court House, Newark, New Jersey, and elsewhere. A selection from the lunettes symbolizing Lyric 
Poetry at Washington well represents his idealistic vein. 


156 From the mural decoration The Boy of Winander in the Library of Congress, Washington. © Curtis & Cameron 


102 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


157 From the mural painting Music of the Sea in the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, New York 


WILL HICKOK LOW, N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.L. 


Wit H. Low, who was born at Albany, New York, in 1853, had won distinction as an illustrator and figure 
painter before turning to decoration. He was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Géréme, also of 
Carolus-Duran. His decoration for the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria was and still is one of the largest 
ensembles executed by any American mural painter. It remains a very creditable example of the art near its 
beginning. At the moment it was natural that the artist should draw much from Baudry’s brilliant decorative 
series for the Paris Opera. The visitor to the Waldorf will still be struck by the appropriateness of the 
paintings for a hall of pleasure. 


pes segues, cacamaennsiiane Ren OF a 


: 158 From the mural painting Anarchy in the Library of Congress, Washington 


ELIHU VEDDER, N.A., $.A.A., N.LA.L. 


Exinv Vepper’s (No. 87) universal and somber genius evidently fitted him for monumental design, and he 
was naturally called early into mural painting. During the ‘nineties Vedder did remarkable mural decorations 
for Bowdoin College, the house of C. P. Huntington, New York, and the Library of Congress at Washington. 
There he also did a fine mosaic, Minerva (No. 181). His symbolism was direct and powerful, being much 
guided by Renaissance precedents, as in the present lunette. This composition well suggests the stern rapture 
of the destructive spirit. The simplicity of the color and the solidity of the relief are exceptional in modern 
mural painting, but seem entirely decorative and right. (See also Nos. 87, 181, 495, 507). 


MURAL PAINTING 103 


159 From the mural painting Florence Protecting the Arts in the Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me. 


ABBOTT HANDERSON THAYER, N.A., S.A.A. 


Assott H. Tuaymr (No. 140) was so painful and hesitating an executant that mural painting was uncon- 
genial to him. On the other hand, his grave and noble mood brought a certain monumentality into his easel 
pictures. This single mural decoration of Thayer’s makes one regret that his noble gift was not oftener thus 
employed. It was painted about 1894. It is possibly too fully realized for a wall decoration, where flatness is 
desirable, but it has the largeness and dignity that the theme and place required. 


KENYON COX, N.A., S.A.A. 


Kenyon Cox (No. 145) came into mural painting in the early nineties in the decoration of the Appellate 
Court at New York. He carried a heavy handicap in a linear and rather colorless style learned from Gér6me. 
But Cox was extraordinarily intelligent and self-critical. To his death his style grew in breadth and color. 
The urbanity and dignity of his mature style are well exemplified in our illustration. For his teaching and 
writing — Cox was one of the best art critics of his time — he was regarded as chief of the conservative wing. 
He made a valiant fight for a reasonable traditionalism against the individualist vagaries of the moment, 
gladly accepting in his designs the symbolism that had come down from the Renaissance. (See also No. 182.) 


Eien: iid. ace 


160 From the mural painting The Light of Learning in the Public Library, Winona, Mich. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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MURAL PAINTING 105 


163 From the mural pendentive Morning in the state capitol, St. Paul, Minn. © Curtis & Cameron 


EDWARD SIMMONS, N.I.A.L. 


Epwarp Simmons, though uneven in creation, reaches, at his best, imaginative heights denied to most of his 
contemporaries. Born in 1852 at Concord, Massachusetts, he studied at Paris with Lefebvre and Boulanger. 
He is one of our best mural painters, with decorations in the Appellate Court, New York, the Library of Con- 
gress, the State House, Massachusetts, and the Minnesota capitol. Equally competent in history and 
symbolism, and very skillful, as in the present example, in blending the two, he brings into modern mural 
decoration much of the gravity and vitality of the older styles. 


EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY, N.A., R.A. 


Epwin A. Azpsery carried into painting that same delicate antiquarianism which had distinguished his illustra- 
tions. The scholarly care of his work attracted C. F. McKim, architect of the Boston Public Library, the 
decoration of which Abbey shared with John Sargent and Puvis de Chavannes, Abbey was born in 1852 in 
Philadelphia and died in London in 1911. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy, but developed chiefly 
through his own efforts as an illustrator. After making a great reputation as an illustrator of poetry and 
drama, he moved to England in the late ’seventies, and won international recognition as a historical painter. 
He turned to mural paint- 
ing in his later years, and 
designed the Legend of the 
Holy Grail for the Boston 
Public Library, 1896- 
1901. These murals for 
their richness of illustra- 
tive features and delicate 
idealism are undoubtedly © 
the most popular in Amer- 
ica. Their decorative 
value is, nevertheless, 
open to question. To 
many they will seem too 
elaborate and unharmo- 
nized as color. Abbey’s 
was a strenuous talent of 
archeological bent, only 
rarely attaining the large- 
ness and simplicity proper 
to mural painting. (See 


164 From the mural painting ‘The Oath of Knighthood in the Boston Public Library. 
also Nos. 513-14.) © Curtis & Cameron 


PIS» 


106 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


165 From the mural painting Science Revealing the Treasures of the Earth in the state capitol, Harrisburg, Pa. 
Curtis & Cameron 


ABBEY’S DECORATIONS FOR THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE CAPITOL 


ABBEY’s powers as a designer are at their best in the decorations for the Pennsylvania state capitol, in which 
to the old idealism he adds a firmer grip on facts. This glorification of the mining industry shows character- 
istically that blend of realism and symbolism which has been a favorite expedient of many American mural 
painters. It has seldom been more effectively carried out. 


JOHN WHITE ALEXANDER, N.A., S.A.A., P.N.A. 


Joun W. ALEXANDER’s extraordinary versatility and taste readily lent themselves to the more modest types 
of mural decoration, as in the lunettes at Washington representing the “History of the Book,” one of which 
we reproduce. In the gigantic courtyard of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, where he spread idealistic 
compositions on the iron industry, his delicate talent was hardly adequate to the task. They are technically 
accomplished, but one feels that they are dutifully imagined and not in creative conviction. In fact, Alex- 
ander’s work well exemplifies the distinction between decorative and monumental character. He was always 
decorative, never monumental. (See No. 222; also Vol. V, Nos. 744-45, 747, 751-52, 755-57.) 


onan ili, Bi nae 9 te tt ae A A RIE Bae tine A 


166 From the mural painting Picture-Writing in the Library of Congress, Washington. © Curtis & Cameron a 


MURAL PAINTING 107 


167 From the mural painting King Arthur and Divine Comedy in the entrance hall, J. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York 


HENRY: SIDDONS MOWBRAY, N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.L. 


OrprNaRIiLy the mural painter is simply a painter. H. Siddons Mowbray belongs to that rare and favored 
class of decorators who are also sculptors, architects and ornamentalists. Mowbray was born in 1858 at 
Alexandria, Egypt, of English parents and was brought to America in 1859. He studied at Paris with Bonnat. 
As a mural painter and expert in decoration he bases his designs on the Italian Renaissance. Out of a some- 
what archaistic method his fine taste and draftsmanship work beautiful effects. He is one of our few deco- 
rators who are personally capable of handling an entire ensemble including relief ornament. Among his best 
interiors are the library of the University Club, New York (Vol. XIII, No. 721), the J. Pierpont Morgan 
Library, New York, and the Public Library at Washington, Connecticut. 


168 From the mural painting Hymns from the Belfry in the state capitol, Harrisburg, Pa. 


WILLIAM BRANTLEY VAN INGEN 


W.B. Van IncEn, who was born at Philadelphia, in 1858, is among our few painters who have practiced mural 
painting constantly. In the story of electricity in the Edison Building, New York, he made the decoration 
tell the story of the inventions that made the building possible. He decorated the Administration Building 
of the Panama Canal with actual scenes of the digging. Such legitimate literalism contrasts refreshingly 
with the general tendency to symbolism. Van Ingen studied under Eakins at the Philadelphia Academy, 
with La Farge at New York, and with Bonnat at Paris. He is a mural painter in the historical vein, but 
preferring modern history, with decorations in the Edison Building, New York; the Congressional Library; 
the state capitol, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; the United States Mint, Philadelphia; the state capitol, Trenton, 
New Jersey, and the Administration Building, Panama. He is an ingenious and resourceful designer. 
XII—8 


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108 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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169 From the mural painting Justice in the Appellate Court, New York, courtesy of the City of New York Art Commission 


ROBERT REID, N.A., N.IA.L. 


Tux brightness of the new Impressionistic coloring first came into our mural painting with the work of Robert 
Reid, who was born in 1862 at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He has however rarely used the bright technique 
in any realistic way but rather as a new decorative resource. He weaves his designs fancifully out of nudes or 
lightly draped figures and the whole effect suggests a skillful revival of French rococo work. Reid studied at 
the Art Students’ League and the Académie Julian. A joyous and fertile talent, he has painted many deco- 
rations in public buildings — the Library of Congress; the State House, Boston; the Appellate Court, 
New York — and designed a remarkable 
series of stained glass windows for the 
H. H. Rogers Memorial Church at 
Fairhaven, Massachusetts, of which he 
controlled also all the interior decoration. 


ELMER ELLSWORTH GARNSEY 


ELMER GarNsEY is one of those 
coéperative painters who, like Frank 
Millet and C. Y. Turner, somewhat 
efface themselves in service to their 
fellows. It is a man like Garnsey who 
holds the ornament together where 
many painters work, arbitrates the color 
schemes where several artists paint 
within eyeshot, and in general keeps 
the artists and their work in harmony. 
Garnsey was born in 1862, at Holmdel, 
New Jersey, and studied at Cooper 
Union and the Art Students’ League. 
He is one of the few American mural 
painters who is also a competent 
ornamentalist. In this capacity and in 
cobrdinating the work of other deco- 
rators his services have been most 
valuable, quite apart from his own 
excellent mural designs. A character- 
istic interior of Garnsey’s is a room in 
the Custom House at New York, deco- 
rated with views of seaports. 


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170 Decoration for a memorial room, City Art Museum, St. Louis 


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MURAL PAINTING 111 


MAX BOHM, N.A. 


A KEEN sense of rhythm is one of the most 
precious qualifications for a mural painter. It 
is that which so well sustains the rather slender 
talent of Robert Reid. Max Bohm had it and 
he also had vitality. In his decorations actuality 
and idealism graze each other delightfully. 
Bohm was born at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1868 and 
died at Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1923. 
He was soundly trained by masters who left 
little trace upon his style — Laurens, Guillemet 


and Constant at Paris. He was a figure and, 


mural painter of great decorative skill with a 
rare zest and vitality of mood, and his death at 
the moment when his gift was reaching its best 
was a sore loss to our mural painting. 


VIOLET OAKLEY, A.N.A. 


To a care for historic accuracy and narrative 
emphasis — qualities proper to a disciple of 
Howard Pyle — Violet Oakley adds a spiritual 
intensity quite her own. She was born in 1874 at 
New York, studied at the Art Students’ League 
and at the Pennsylvania Academy under Howard 
Pyle and Cecelia Beaux, finishing her training at 
Paris with Aman-Jean, Collin and Lazar. She is 
an illustrator and mural decorator in a romantic 
and colorful style with themes preferably symbol- 
ical or religious. Among her many mural paint- 
ings is a great series devoted to spiritual liberty 


175 From the mural painting in the music room of the Longyear house, 
Brookline, Mass. 


in the capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (our illustration is drawn therefrom), and an Ascension in the 


Church of All Angels, New York. (See also Vol. I, Chapter XII, Nos. 518-20, 521-22). 


EROS THE PRI 
s x 
SSING UNTO THE LORD 


176 From the mural painting Penn's Vision in the state capitol, Harrisburg, Pa. © Curtis & Cameron 


112 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


FREDERIC CLAY 
BARTLETT, R.A. (Munich) 


THE spectacle of work and 
the city view have been oc- 
casionally used as themes for 
mural decorations, if only as 
an escape from a too perva- 
sive idyllism and symbolism. 
Frederic Clay Bartlett, who 
was born at Chicago in 1873, 
has practiced this contempo- 
rary mode with energy of 
vision reinforced by a fine 
sense of color. Our illustra- 
tion is characteristic of his 
qualities. Bartlett was a 
pupil of Gysis at Munich, 
and of Collin, Aman-Jean and 
Whistler at Paris. He com- 
mands an extraordinary force 
of light and color which he 
earlier employed in Oriental 
scenes and now employs in 
mural painting. His is a 
robust talent somewhat akin 


177. + From the mural painting The Great Wail of China in the Burnham Library of Architecture, ; 
Art Institute of Chicago to Brangwyn Ss. 


ARTHUR B. DAVIES 


In approaching the highly imaginative painter Arthur B. Davies by way of his mural painting we reverse 
his development, for his decoration shows strong traces of Cubism. That need frighten no one away, since 
he handles the new formulas with tact, as accessories to his more familiar sort of idealistic designs. Davies 
was born in 1862 at Utica, New York, where he was a pupil of Dwight Williams, but he is chiefly self-educated. 
The enigmatic and fasci-’ 
nating figures of this 
unique decoration of 1915 
all seem to be awaiting 
music. The color is lovely, 
based on tawny browns 
and blues. The devices of 
Cubism are used in the 
background where the 
tilting geometrical planes 
suggest space without de- 
fining any recognizable 
place, and for the small 
room in which the panel 
stands this indeterminate 
space is probably more 
decoratively appropriate 
than any literal repre- 
sentation of large spaces 
could have been. (See 
also Nos. 253-56, 457, ce en) ua, 
466.) >. FE ij 


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178 From the mural painting for a private music room in New York 


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THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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MURAL PAINTING 


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From the mosaic in the Church of St. Matthew, Washington 


EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD, N.A., S.A.A., P.N.A., N.LA.L. 

Epwin H. Buasurrevp’s versatility as a designer (see also No. 161) has naturally extended to other forms of 

mural decoration than painting. In this mosaic he shows his intelligent command of a now ill-understood 

medium. It is one of his maturest efforts; and if it inevitably lacks something of the unconscious grandeur 

of its Renaissance prototypes, it gives as resonant an echo of them as our age is able to make. In a success 
It is interesting to note 


that would have spoiled many a man, the painter has lost none of his aspiration. 
how readily the artist adopts that formality of style which is proper to a mosaic. 


116 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


From the mosaic panel History in the Library of Congress, Washington. © Curtis & Cameron 


FREDERICK DIELMAN, N.A., P.N.A., S.A.A. 


Freperrck DreLmAn was the first and only American painter of foreign birth to be made President of the 
National Academy. It was an honor which his personal sagacity and evenly maintained talent amply justi- 
fied. Dielman was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1847. Brought in childhood to America, he returned for 
his training to Germany as a pupil of Diez at Munich. He began with genre pictures, often of classical 
subjects; and also did some illustration. Latterly he has been concerned with mural design and teaching. 


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From the tapestry The Great Crusade, in the George C. Booth Collection, 


Detroit Institute of Arts 


His somewhat severe style well suits the 
medium of mosaic in which he has 
probably worked more frequently than 
any other American painter. 


ALBERT HERTER, S.A.A., A.N.A. 


TAPESTRY-WEAVING is of course merely’ 


a kind of mural painting in colored 
threads, and hence properly finds its 
place here. That place is a modest one, 
for though much American tapestry is 
technically excellent it is mostly deriva- 
tive from older designs. Albert Herter, 
however, has designed in a contemporary 
fashion. Born at New York in 1871, 
Herter became successively a pupil of 
Beckwith at the Art Students’ League 
and of Laurens and Cormon at Paris; 
he early mastered the Beaux-Arts style 
and, tiring of it, turned to mural paint- 
ing, and finally to general decoration and 
especially to tapestry design. Here he 
has skillfully adapted to modern uses the 
splendors of the late Gothic pictorial 
cloths. The Great Crusade is one of the 
fine bits of symbolism that have been 
inspired by the World War and reflects 
the long heritage of idealism behind 
America’s entry. 


MURAL PAINTING 


JOHN LA FARGE, N.A., S.A.A. | 
STAINED-GLASs design is again, strictly speaking, only a highly | 
specialized form of mural painting. It is conditioned by the @ 
translucent material and by the necessity of support by leads, 
which count in design as broad black lines. In general, the 
American tradition has been highly pictorial. We began with 
windows of this sort imported from England or Germany, and 
only gradually developed our own glass designers. Most of 
them have been painters. Among the many who have designed 
ably for glass, a book of this kind can consider only the most 
inventive and greatest. This is unquestionably John La Farge. 
When in the middle of the eighteen seventies he began to con- 
cern himself with glass, he was dissatisfied with its poor 
quality. Noticing the fine iridescence on a commercial soap 
dish, he experimented for glass of greater depth and variety. 
His researches were carried forward by an associate, Louis C. 
Tiffany. With these materials of unprecedented splendor La 
Farge designed many windows of a fully pictorial type. The 
gracious and bold design from the Buffalo church is charac- 


teristic. It is a translucent painting without the profusion 


of decoration which is traditional in stained glass. This 


‘fee a Ss 


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Te eS ee ee eee ee ene 


een RE ener oem, 


187 From the stained-glass Peacock Window in the 
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass, 


CE OT a So ME ee © me: | 


eon ’ 


manner has been 
widely emulated, 
but no stained 
glass designer has 
inherited La 
Farge’s skill in 
handling this 
splendid but re- 
fractory medium. 
(See also Nos. 
108-10, 152-54, 
220-21, 496,499.) 


186 From the stained-glass Resurrection Window 
in Trinity Church, Buffalo 


JOHN LA FARGE’S PEACOCK WINDOW 


Near the end of his life La Farge worked to eliminate the 
leads, cementing the pieces of glass invisibly. Two little 
windows of this sort, the Peony Window and the Peacock Win- 
dow, are possibly the most colorful creations in the entire 
\history of handicraft. For larger work the method was 
neither practicable nor advisable. At present, our designers 
for glass, realizing the difficulties of full pictorialism, are 
generally returning to the medizval method of small figure 
composition in formal panels with much decoration. This 
method is safer, as more idiomatic to the material. But 
since the movement is retrospective and the many designers 
of rather equal merit, we have to note it passingly in general 
terms. John La Farge’s invention, since no one has had 
the genius to follow it up, remains a unique contribution of 
America to the arts of design. It was a brilliant adaptation 
of the splendor of the Renaissance style in a more splendid 
material than even the Renaissance had provided. 


118 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE, N.A., 
S.A.A., ALACAGE. 


Wit11am M. Cuase’s love of colors and textures and 
rare surfaces found its most joyous expression in his 
large picture of still life. His studio was always overfull 
of stuffs and metal work — properties for his interiors. 
The lustrous iridescence of great fish especially attracted 
him, and his painting of them was as consummate from 
the point of view of sheen and surface as it was deficient 
in inner gravity. Chase is the high type of pure techni- 
cian, and thus is at his best when nothing but technique 
is at stake. (See also No. 150.) 


188 From the painting Still Life— Fisk in the Pennsylvania 
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 


MARIA OAKEY DEWING 
Tuer infusing of inanimate objects with the artist’s 
mood is the final grace of a still-life painter. Mrs. Dew- 
ing, who was born in New York in 1845, has this 
quality in a high degree. She was a pupil of the 
National Academy school, and of La Farge and 
Courtois. She is a painter of flowers of extraordinary 
accuracy and sensitiveness, giving lovingly the de- 
tails of the portraiture of flowers without loss of their 
softness and bloom. She is also an excellent por- 
traitist and painter of gardens. One rarely finds such 
an alliance of talent as she and her husband, 
Thomas W. Dewing (No. 224), represent. 


189 From the painting Poppies and Mignonette in the Freer 
Gallery of Art, Washington 


EMIL CARLSEN, N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.L. 


A smmiLar quality of intimacy invests the still lifes of Emil 
Carlsen. He was born in 1835 at Copenhagen, Denmark, 
where he studied as an architect, and came to New York in 
1872. He began as a still-life painter, combining with fine 
tone and texture great intimacy of feeling. Carlsen has lately 
cultivated with success landscape and marine painting. In 
general he is closely attached to the Luminist manner, but, 
like Twachtman, seeks his effects rather through subtlety of 
tone and manipulation of surface than through roughly broken 
color. (See also No. 203.) 


190 From the painting Still Life in the Art Institute 
of Chicago « 


119 


STILL LIFE 


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120 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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193 From the painting The Silver Screen in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, 
Washington 


Ses 


FRANK WESTON BENSON, N.A., N.IA.L. 


Waite all of Frank W. Benson’s work reveals a joy of life, he is chiefly a technician. Born at Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1862, he was a pupil of the Boston Museum school and of Boulanger and Lefebvre at Paris. He 


a Bg he Hesse 


From the painting An Offering to Buddha in the possession of 
M., Parish Watson, New York 


is an excellent painter of portraits and groups 
in outdoor conditions, employing skillfully 
the broken color of the Impressionists. He 
is a sturdy draftsman and a fine etcher. 
After achieving success in interiors and 
portraits in the open air, Benson has turned 
to etching and still life. Here his fine eye 
and accomplished technique achieve such 
marvels of brilliancy as the present picture. 
(See also Nos, 240, 451.) 


HENRY GOLDEN DEARTH, 
N.A., S.A.A. 


Henry Gotpen DerartH imposed upon the 
general humble themes of still life a strange- 
ness not without monumentality. He was 
born in 1864 at Bristol, Rhode Island, and 
died at New York. A pupil of the Ecole 
des Beaux-Arts and of Aimée Morot at 
Paris, he first painted French landscape in 
low but luminous tonalities, with great rich- 
ness of mood. In his later years, Dearth 
forsook his gray-brown tonalities, adopted 
the sharpest colors and built up a fastidious 
artificial world in which the rich properties 
of his studio combined with the figure — 
both in terms of still life. These exotic 
compositions are of impressively decorative 
effect with the most novel and delightful 
audacities of color. (See also No. 206.) 


HOWARD GARDINER CUSHING, 
ANAS S.A.A. 


Howarp GARDINER CUSHING represents 
an uncompromising eestheticism akin to 
Dearth’s. No contemporary carried 
further the research of the decorative. 
He was born at Boston in 1869, and 
died in 1916; studied with Laurens, 
Constant and Doucet at Paris. Cushing 
made a few flower studies based some- 
what on Japanese arrangements in 
which his fastidious taste is quite at its 
best. He was more widely known for 
his portraiture which had an exotic 
and very decorative quality of great 
charm. His fantastic vein also oc- 
casionally expresses itself in informal 
mural decoration. (See also No. 274.) 


HENRY GEORGE KELLER 


Henry G. KELLER, renouncing the 
somber and rich tones usual with still- 
life painters, has sought the keen res- 
onance of color which the Modernists 
first explored. Keller was born at 
Cleveland, Ohio, in 1870. He was a 
pupil of Bergman at Diisseldorf; of 
Baische at Karlsruhe; and of Ziigel at 
Munich. Keller is a very experimen- 


STILL LIFE 121 


195 From the painting Flower Piece in the possession of 
Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, New York 


tal artist, working in landscape toward abstract pattern (but always preserving recognizability), and lately 
developing in still life extraordinary force of color and felicity of composition. He is also an accomplished 
painter of animals and a successful teacher. 


pe 
CHAPTER RIALY 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 


FTER the Franco-Prussian War, two talented young Frenchmen, Camille 
A Pisarro and Claude Monet, thoroughly restudied the art of landscape. They 
noted that most landscapes of the past were painted on a far lower scale than 
that of nature, using sharp contrasts of light and dark to obtain luminosity — studio 
devices which nature herself never employs. They also observed that full sunlight had 
not been successfully painted. Turner, whom they had studied in London, had come 
nearest to it, as they thought, because he rejected the darker colors and built his luminous 
canvases on white and the primary colors, using the so-called prismatic palette. They 
also advocated a new attitude for the artist. His réle was no longer to be one of active 
interpretation but of passive observation. He was to clear his mind of memories and 
prepossessions and let the scene come to him. Such momentary, intense observation 1s 
of the essence of Impressionism, every time being the only time, and the innocence of the 
eye being the main thing. Such seeing opened new beauties of color and light, and for- 
bade the old artificial beauties of traditional landscape painting. 

Since the basis was the isolated impression, the picture, no longer executed in the studio 
but in the face of nature, must be completed before the impression fades, say in a few 
hours. The light changes rapidly, and therewith the impression. To keep on painting 
when the impression has shifted is to mix several pictures on one canvas. The subject 
is no longer the topographical forms but the light, one might even say the time of day. 
Repeatedly Monet insisted that he painted not forms but the colored atmosphere that 
lay between them and himself. The forms, then, became indifferent. Monet paints 
twenty Hay Stacks, Sea Cliffs, Cathedral Fronts, Rows of Poplars, Lily Pools, there 
being always a new picture when the clouds pass or the sun shifts a few degrees. At an 
early exhibition he called one of his pictures Impression, Soleil Couchant, and the term 
Impressionism sprung to the lips of hostile critics as a slogan of abuse. The Impressionists 
adopted it gallantly, and fought their way to recognition under it, winning their fight 
about 1880. Evidently Luminism would be the more accurate name, as indicating their 
subject matter, light, and the means they employed to obtain it. The ideal of capturing 
momentary, beautiful effects of light has engrossed so many excellent modern artists 
that it may seem pedantry to emphasize its limitations. But evidently the dogma of the 
single isolated impression logically reduces the artist to a series of theoretically unrelated _ 
states of observation and execution, and deprives the work of art of everything that 
memory means to the individual artist, and tradition, which is merely the memory of the 
race, means to the work of art. In short, the program was anti-intellectual, and its 
complete realization would have resulted in wholly banishing mind from art, except in so 
far as something, a modicum of mind, is implied in any state of seeing and doing. . 

This implication of the Luminist theory was not soon perceived, in fact is still imper- 


122 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 123 


fectly understood, and early criticism hardened rather against the new and startling 
technique. It seemed to consist of rough blotches of bright paint confusedly applied, 
and the pictures were regarded as shameless daubs. As a matter of fact, the new technique 
was entirely logical and very thoughtful. Given the necessity of rapid execution, the old 
successive overpaintings became impossible. The method must be summary and direct, 
a few hours to a picture. Then, if high degrees of light must be suggested, a new method 
must be found, for pigment is always much darker than the respective colored light. Here 
the Impressionist drew upon the recent experiments of Chevreul and Rood. These physi- 
cists had discovered that a hue produced by many broken colors mixed at the right 
distance by the eye was far more luminous than the same color mixed on the palette. 
For example a coarse stipple of blue and yellow on the canvas emits more light than the 
brightest green in the tubes. On such facts the Impressionists based their new technique, 
rejecting black, which never occurs in nature, using the primary colors, red, blue, yellow 
or their near affinities, in skillful weavings of strokes and dots, building the picture solely 
in colored planes, which, without contours or sharply defined edges, suggested the place, 
distance and general quality of the objects in the picture. Such was the early procedure 
of the Impressionist until it was refined in a more scientific sense by their successors of 
the ‘nineties, Bonnard, Seurat and Signac. It did well its work of producing vivid 
coruscation, and it has engrossed the imagination of the more progressive artists ever 
since that time. 

As regards landscape, it had the advantage of greater truthfulness to general effect 
and of making possible registrations of full sunlight with which the older painting had 
been unable or had not cared to cope. It had the disadvantage of largely sacrificing 
suggestion of form and mass to suggestion of illumination, and of rejecting all procedures 
which are based on tradition, memory and second thought. Yet, all in all, it had a most 
reinvigorating effect on landscape painting, and the Americans who took up the method 
measurably avoided its excesses. 

In figure painting, though it produced the most novel and brilliant canvases, its 
advantage was less apparent. The figure became merely a casual reflector of light, an 
impersonal apparition; beauty of form was much broken up and effaced for a hardly 
compensating play of iridescent color. The light, as Fromentin had said of Rembrandt, 
became “the principal personage of the picture,”’ not always to the picture’s advantage. 
The nude in the open air grew tediously staple. For evidently the peculiar beauty of the 
nude may be better sensed in the fixed and artificial light of the studio. Upon portraiture 
the effect of the new Luminism was frankly deplorable. You cannot give the sense of 
a personality under distracting and accidental effects of light, you can at best give a 
casual and unstudied guess at the personality. Such has never been the practice of great 
portraitists, and the best of our time have either kept to the traditional methods, or have 
merely used the new palette decoratively. 

Luminism came tardily to America against bitter opposition. Theodore Robinson 
was the pioneer. After the usual training at the Beaux-Arts, he sought Monet, and in 
the late “eighties painted excellent pictures in the new technique. He was a good figure 
painter, and declined to make the complete sacrifice of contour and mass which the 
unrelenting theory of his master demanded. Robinson’s endeavor to reform the old 
manner cautiously in the light of the new color was generally followed by the American 

XII—9 


124 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Impressionists. The year of his death, 1896, saw the award of prizes to Childe Hassam 
and Edward Redfield for pictures of Luminist intent. They have remained the leaders 
of the movement in America, Hassam, more delicate and experimental, searching the 
nuances of the figure in indoor and outdoor illumination, doing iridescent seas and cliffs, 
knocking off wonderful water colors and pastels, at times returning to his first theme, the 
whirl and hue of festive New York; Redfield, sticking more resolutely and robustly to the 
business of suggesting the scenery of his own Delaware valley. The two represent re- 
spectively what may be called the tender and the tough side of Luminism among us, and 
scores of able painters have enrolled themselves under one banner or the other. The 
work of such men as Elmer Schofield, Cullen Yates, and Gardner Symons is the whole- 
some staple of our exhibitions, its general rightness suffering perhaps from a shade of 
monotony. 

More important than the three pioneers of Luminism is John H. Twachtman. He 
approached the innovation still more cautiously, ignored the prismatic palette and all 
stereotyped stippling formulas, seeking rather a delicate registration of values of light 
that should leave the form, substance and linear composition intact. His pictures are 
the last refinement, not so much of the new method as of the new principle. He creates 
his world with infinitesimal differences of high tones, yet leaves it firm, precise and 
austerely impressive. The picture that at first sight seems merely a whisper actually 
carries farther and grips longer than those pictures which are intentionally a shout. Asa 
teacher — for neglect drove him to that bread-winning expedient — Twachtman imposed - 
beneficially his own strong and lucid refinement upon many pupils. Emil Carlsen, Charles 
Woodbury and many others have made an adjustment with Impressionism similar to 
Twachtman’s, and such young men as Dougherty and the Beals have sought the spirit 
of Luminism, without wholly sacrificing thereto the older values, or adopting its pet 
recipes. The future of American landscape is probably along these lines of discreet 
assimilation rather than with the orthodox Impressionists, unless indeed we are to be 
swept into new channels as yet dubious and uncharted. 

The final ultra-scientific development of Luminism in the work of Seurat, Cross, and 
Signac was generally ignored here, and on the whole for good reasons. American land- 
scape painters have generally approached these innovations with practical intent; less 
to find new principles than to try better procedures. Thus the general acceptance of 
Luminist methods has not really impaired the essentially national character of our land- 
scape school. On the contrary Luminism has given new resources to an objective tendency 
already firmly established. 

Aside from the direct influence of Luminism, its indirect effects on the older artists 
have generally been beneficial. Martin and Inness in their latest manner here showed the 
way. Luminism has required of the older men a restudy of consecrated conventions, has 
set before them the delight of finer notations of color-values considered as relations of 
light, has provided them with new technical resources, has offered a novel, bright color- 
scale with its own decorative possibilities. So most of the progressive painters of our 
generation have taken counsel of Impressionism even where they have not accepted it 
wholesale, and they have not failed to receive the benefit which ever comes to art from 
any sane and fine adventure in naturalism. 


nas (SR er, 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 125 


THEODORE ROBINSON, S.A.A. 


Ir was perhaps fortunate that our pioneer Im- 
pressionist, Theodore Robinson, while grasping 
the principle intelligently, declined to adopt the 
more radical and questionable procedures of the 
new school. Robinson was born in 1852 at 
Irasburg, Vermont, and died in 1896 at New 
York City. Like most of the ambitious young 
painters of the seventies, he sought Carolus and 
Géréme at Paris, but unlike the rest he promptly 
grasped the meaning of the new Impressionist 
movement and attached himself to its leader, 
Claude Monet. He became an excellent painter 
of landscape and the figure in the open air, and a 
skillful creator of effects of sunlight, but he was 
taken away before his art was fully grown. His 
position as a pioneer of Luminism in America is 
assured; indeed his compromise with the more 
extreme procedures of the Impressionists became 
standard for the American progressive school. 


JOHN HENRY TWACHTMAN, S.A.A. 


Joun H. TwacuTMan again adopted the spirit of 
the new Luminism, but worked out his own 
personal methods. He was born at Cincinnati 
in 1853, and died at Gloucester, Massachusetts, 
in 1902. A pupil of Duveneck, at Cincinnati, of 
Loefftz at Munich and of Boulanger and Lefebvre 
at Paris, Twachtman soon renounced these 
academic beginnings and adopted the pale tonali- 
ties of the new Luminist school, whose formulas 


197 From the painting La Vachére in the National Gallery of Art, 
Washington 


he employed with fastidious delicacy, but without sacrifice of strength. He was perhaps the ablest land- 
scapist in the Impressionist following that America has produced, being equally happy in snow scenes, 
marines, cataracts, and harbor views. His art had the firm basis of an impeccable draftsman, which is 
most apparent in his sketches and etchings. (See No. 439.) 


198 From the painting Summer in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington 


126 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


TWACHTMAN’S 
SUBTLETY 


TWACHTMAN’S precise and ex- 
quisite handling of those tones 
which give distance and atmos- 
phere is best illustrated in such 
pictures as this little masterpiece 
which also embodies his always 
original and striking ideas of 
composition. The balance of 
tones is so subtle as to approach 
a vanishing point, and his pic- 
tures were regarded as empty and 
meaningless by many of his con- 
temporaries. But such work as 
this eventually trains the public 
eye, and to-day Twachtman’s 
position as one of our finest 
landscapists is soundly assured. 
Even his slightest sketches have 
rare distinction and are preferred 
by many to his finished pictures. 
For in them he has, by eliminat- 
ing every unessential detail, per- 
fected his theory of concentrated 
composition. 


: st BS SEX ‘ sy RES ae : "i 
199 From the painting Wild Cherry Tree in the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 
Buffalo, N. Y. 


JULIAN ALDEN WEIR, N.A., P.N.A. 


J. ApEn WEIR used the new resources of the Luminists as a means of reinforcing his strong native Ameri- 
canism. He rejected the prismatic palette, and it is only his handling that betrays his relations to the new 
French school. He was born at New York in 1852 and died there in 1919. A pupil of his father, Robert 
W. Weir, and of Géréme 
at Paris, Weir became an 
excellent figure painter in 
the Beaux-Arts style. Soon 
he renounced this uncon- 
genial manner and ranged 
himself with the Luminists 
by reason of his concern 
with lighting and atmos- 
phere. He preferred silvery 
tones and overcast skies to 
the blare of full sunlight. 
His thoughtful and deli- 
cate spirit evoked a blithe 
yet restrained poetry from 
our commonest American 
scenes. One feels in his 
pictures a quietly ardent 
love of the native soil and 
at times a strong sense of 
the idyllic, in his plowed 
lands and plowmen. (See _ [ 
also Nos. 237, 440.) 500 


sae 


From the painting Upland Pasture in the National Gallery of Art, Washington 


— Pe, 


Deed ‘4 de) 2 Amie oe 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 127 


WILLARD LEROY 
METCALF, N.I1A.L. 


In general point of view Wil- 
lard L. Metcalf never departed 
much from our native landscape 
school, but since he practiced 
skillfully the new simplifications 
and carried very far the science 
of color as values of distance his 
place is with the new school 
after all. Metcalf was born at 
Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1858 
and died at New York in 1924. 
He was a pupil of the Boston 
Museum school, and of Bou- 
langer and Lefebvre at Paris. 
But it was chiefly his own studies 
that made him a landscapist of 
rare precision and delicacy, seek- 
ing, like the Impressionists, 


exact notation of outdoor light 


but without accepting their 
formulas. He observes in the 
face of nature in New England 


201 From the painting Unfolding Buds in the Detroit Institute of Art. 
© Detroit Publishing Co. 


an objective rectitude which, in virtue of scrupulously fine vision, attains a sober sort of poetry. There 
were greater artists, but there was no more accurate eye in America in his time. 


THOMAS ALEXANDER HARRISON, N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.L. 


ALEXANDER Harrison may stand for many able American painters who have completely capitulated to a 
foreign manner. He was born at Philadelphia in 1853 and became a pupil there of the Pennsylvania Academy. 
Later he studied with Bastien-Lepage and Géréme at Paris. Harrison is a most skillful painter of landscapes, 
marines and the nude in the open air, a delicate colorist attaining his iridescence without using the roughly 
broken color of the Impressionists. He has received many foreign honors and is one of our most distinguished 


expatriates. 


202 From the painting Le Grand Miroir in the Wilstach Gallery, Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia 


128 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


EMIL CARLSEN, 
N.A., S:AsA” NULACL: 


Emin CARLSEN’s patient 
and thorough development 
has led him from still life 
(No. 190) to landscape and 
marine painting, in both 
of which he commands at 
once a certain delicacy and 
largeness of vision. Carl- 
sen is a sensitive interpre- 
ter of sea and landscape, 
keeping the tone very high 
with slight contrasts, and 
with a fine sense for the 
movement of clouds and 
water. In the frankness 
and directness that under- 
lie the refinement of his art 
he is true to his Scandi- 
navian origins. His quali- 
ties too are affine to those 


of our American realism. 


203 From the painting The Lazy Sea in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn 


HENRY 
BAYLEY 
SNELL, 
NAS SAAS 


Someruine of Eng- 
lish open-hearted- 
ness and objectivity 
as regards landscape 
remains in the art of 
Henry B. Snell, al- 
though he received 
his training and has 
made his career in 
America. Born at 
Richmond, Eng- 
land, in 1858, he 
came early to the 
United States and 
wasapupilofthe Art 
Students’ League. 
He is an accom- 
plished marine 
painter in oils and 
water color with fine 
gifts of observation 
and great probity of execution. Aside from his painting he has been constantly a teacher with a gift of 
respecting and developing the individuality of his students. His is an art of fine understanding, moderated 
rather than assertive. 


204 From the painting Entrance to the Harbor of Polperro in the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass. 


oe a, ee oe ene, ee 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 129 


ES mS sin kent Res: fai i ee: 
205 From the painting The Church at Old Lyme in the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo. © Detroit Publishing Co. 


CHILDE HASSAM, N.A., N.LA.L. 


Wuen one speaks of Luminism in America one thinks, if well informed, of the painting of Childe Hassam, 
for Hassam has more faithfully assimilated both the spirit and the technical procedures of Impressionism than 
any other American painter. Nevertheless, his work has kept an entirely native quality. Hassam was born 
at Boston in 1859 and studied at Paris with Boulanger and Lefebvre. He began as an illustrator, genre painter 
and water colorist, giving valuable records of New York in the eighties and ’nineties.. Finally, he turned to 
landscape painting in the manner of the French Impressionists, and has made himself the most prominent 
practitioner in this style in America. He paints also the figure out of doors and in, always subordinating it to 
the luministic effect desired. His sense of color relations as registering distance and atmospheric density is the 
finest. The limitation of his great talent is on the side of invention and meaning. Among his favorite sketch- 
ing grounds have been Gloucester, the Isle of Shoals, Cos Cob, Connecticut, and Easthampton, Long Island. 


130 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


fit, 


206 From the painting Golden Sunset in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn 


HENRY GOLDEN DEARTH, N.A., S.A.A. 


Henry Gotpen Deartu’s always lyrical and fantastic vein prevented him from going the whole way of 
scientific experimentation with the Impressionists, but he learned much from them. The Golden Sunset is a 
fine example of those French landscapes in low tones which Dearth produced for many years with unfailing 
skill and imagination. The method is transitional between the older dark manner and the new Impressionism. 
Intimacy is the note. It has evident affiliations with the work of such transitional French painters as 
Cazin, but is richer in mood. Dearth passed in his late years into a purely esthetic and esoteric phase 
which has been treated under still life (No. 194). 


WILLIAM 
RITSCHEL, N.A. 


Wiii1amM RirscHeL again 
has shared the modern 
preoccupation with spe- 
cific effects of ilumination 
without accepting the Lu- 
minist palette and han- 
dling, caring too much for 
the expression of mood to 
accept quasi-scientific limi- 
tations. He was born in 
1864, at Nuremberg, Ger- 
many, and was a pupil of 
Kaulbach and Raupp at 
Munich. Ritschel came to 
America in 1895 already a 
well-trained artist. As a 
marine painter, he conveys 
both the power of the sea 
and the brilliant delicacy 
of its illumination, with a 


207 From the painting Morea Moon in the Milch Galleries, New York sense of Its my stery - 


LUMINISM AND ITS 


EDWARD WILLIS 
REDFIELD, 
S.A.A., N.LA.L. 


Epwarp W. ReEprFieLp, 
who was born at Bridge- 
ville, Delaware, in 1868, 
is perhaps the typical 
examplar of “bright paint- 
ing’ in America, seeking 
the coruscation of the 
French Impressionists 
without making their sac- 
rifice of form. Redfield 
studied at the Pennsyl- 
vania Academy and at 
Paris with Bouguereau 
and Robert-Fleury. As a 
landscapist he accepts the 
blond palette of the 
Impressionists without 
adopting their formulas. 
His pictures are so many 
big and vigorous sketches 
in the face of nature. His 


SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 131 


From the painting Snowdrifts in the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence 


art, with a certain wholesome obviousness, catches also something of the pathos of old cultivated sites ne- 
glected and being reclaimed by nature. Redfield’s technical point of view is shared by many able landscape 
painters, such as W. E. Schofield, Cullen Yates, George Gardner Symons and others whom strict limitations 


of space unfortunately relegate to a bare mention. 


209 From the painting Late Afternoon in the Art Association of Indianapolis, Indiana 


PAUL DOUGHERTY, N.A., S.A.A., N.DLA-L. 


SUPERFICIALLY Paul Dougherty might be included in this group but his richer and more subjective coloring 
and his decorative sense give him a place apart. 


He was born in 1877, at Brooklyn, New York, and 


studied independently at 
Paris, London, Florence, 
Venice and Munich. As 
a painter of marines and 
landscapes he reveals both 
a fine command of deco- 
rative arrangement and 
an extraordinary vision of 
the light and motion of 
nature. He is an experi- 
mental spirit equally able 
in oil painting and in wa- 
ter colors, and is at pres- 
ent seeking the massive 
emphasis of the new con- 
structionist school, with 
results as yet uncertain. 
In every phase he has the 
precious gift of energetic 
workmanship. 


132 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


DANIEL 
GARBER, N.A. 


AGAIN it is a keen and 
personal decorative sense 
that limits the naturalism 
of Daniel Garber. With 
a fine discretion, he seeks 
the scenes in nature that 
furnish the preferred ar- 
rangements of masses and 
hues. He was born at 
Manchester, Indiana, in 
1880, and studied at the 
Academy of Cincinnati 
and Philadelphia. Garber 
paints the landscape of 
the middle Delaware 
valley with a keen sense 
of pattern and unity, 
working the color toward 
a preferred tonality of 
terra cotta and pale blue. 
Within this convention, 
he is a close student of 
the facts of illumination, 
which he also transmutes 
skillfully in occasional in- 
teriors with figures. None of our landscapists, perhaps, has caught so completely the very quiver of 
sultry weather. 


210 From the painting T'ohickon in the National Gallery of Art, Washington 


JOHN SINGER SARGENT, N.A., R.A., N.DA.L. 
Satep and somewhat 
bored by his triumph in 
fashionable __ portraiture, 
John Sargent (Nos. 225- 
27) about 1910 turned to 
outdoor sketching, and 
achieved both in oils and 
water colors notations of 
light and form of the most 
consummate virtuosity. 
No American painter has 
conveyed the actual look 
of things more faithfully, 
and the more bewildering 
the look of things was, as 
in this instance, the more 
ably Sargent painted it. 
What is lacking in this 
amazingly skillful work is 
anything like personal in- 
terpretation. It is more 
interesting to the painter 
than to the layman. (See 
also Nos. 172-73.) 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 133 


A WATER COLOR BY SARGENT 


SARGENT is never more ingratiating than 
when he drops the professional pose and 
pride and sketches his intimates in such 
water colors as this. It is masterly in the 
most unobtrusive fashion; the virtuoso has 
given way to the friend, and meaning, which 
is singularly and perhaps purposely absent 
from much of Sargent’s brilliant painting, 
creeps refreshingly into the work. 


DODGE MACKNIGHT 


Few American water colorists spread a more 
beautiful wash than Dodge MacKnight. It 
is this technical resourcefulness, the capacity 
to force slight means to yield elaborate 
effects that has given MacKnight a faithful 
following among connoisseurs. He was born 
at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1860, and 
was a pupil of Cormon in Paris. He is an 
extraordinarily brilliant water colorist, get- 
ting the maximum of luminosity out of the 
scantiest and most vivid strokes and washes. 
In his pyrotechnics there is a certain 
monotony of excellence. He has sketched 
widely, but the sense of place is singularly 
weak in his work. He is a capital type of 
the painter who is chiefly an executant. He 
is well represented in the Boston museums. 


213 From the painting Below Zero in the possession of Denman W. Ross, Cambridge, Mass. 


134 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ERNEST LAWSON, N.A. 


An admirable lyrical sense sustained by a sufficient grasp of actual appearances and an uncommon decorative 
tact have contributed to make Ernest Lawson justly the most esteemed of our younger painters of landscape. 
He was born in California in 1878, and spent several years in private study in France. His very personal 
gift in landscape expresses itself in gracious compositional patterns expressed in frank color. No one better 
conveys the freshness and joy of springtime; everything is pervaded with a sense of possible movement 
and of growth, and the color is of extraordinary lusciousness. It seems that if you squeezed a Lawson dew 
would drop from it. 


215 


ee . ee 


< ¢ : ee 6 hes i. 3 


From the painting Vanishing Mist in the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh 


LAWSON IN MORE 
SIMPLE TENDENCY 


In his more recent work Lawson 
sacrifices something of the blond 
lusciousness of his early pictures 
to more simple and massive con- 
struction. This is a transitional 
picture in which there is less 
emphasis on compositional pat- 
tern and more on mass and sub- 
stance. Lawson’s art is working 
in this direction, under the influ- 
ence of Cézanne and his Modern- 
ist followers, and though this 
must entail some sacrifice of 
Lawson’s earlier lyrical quality, 
doubtless his talent will find us 
compensations for the old beau- 
ties which we momentarily miss, 


a 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 135 


216 From the painting Southern Seas in the possession of the artist 


REYNOLDS BEAL, A.N.A. 


Au the close observers of appearances found welcome resources in the bright palette of Impressionism, 
Nothing more of the movement than that appears in the work of Reynolds Beal, who, a yachtsman him- 
self, paints the way of a ship on the sea in the spirit of a robust illustrator. Beal was born at New York in 
1867 and followed the classes of Chase. He has made himself a powerful marine painter, chiefly in water 
colors, with a fine grasp of the energy of waves and the tossing of fishing craft. Perhaps only a sailor of 
small boats can appreciate the truthfulness of such a record as Beal’s. 


HAYLEY LEVER, 
A.N.A., R.B.A. 


Ir is ships resting at 
moorings or along crum- 
bling wharves that attract 
Hayley Lever. He was 
born at Adelaide, South 
Australia, in 1876, and 
studied in Paris, London 
and New York. He is a 
sensitive observer of fish- 
ing ports on both sides of 
the ocean, with a keen 
sense both for their move- 
ment and color and as well 
for their poetry. He 
balances with fine pic- 
torial tact the interest of 
a seaport as a mere 
spectacle and as a place 
of human activities and 
habitation. 


136 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


218 From the painting The Western Slope in the possession of the artist 


JONAS LIE, N.A. 


Our artists of Scandinavian birth have 
very readily naturalized themselves, having 
a candid and objective outlook like that of 
our own painters. Among the best of them 
is Jonas Lie, who was born in Norway in 
1880. A pupil of the National Academy and 
the Art Students’ League, he made brilliant 
beginnings in landscape which he has con- 
tinued intermittently. He has painted a 
series of scenes from the building of the 
Panama Canal. In his recent work, ex- 
emplified by the present picture, at all times 
an excellent colorist and an ingenious com- 
poser, he has struck a larger note. 


GIFFORD BEAL, N.A. 


Onz is always grateful to the joyous painter, 
and especially when he adds as well quick 
sympathy and technical refinement. This 
broadly suggests the mood of Gifford Beal, 
who was born in New York City in 1879. 
After study with Chase, Du Mond and 
Ranger, Beal became a painter of landscapes 
with figures and especially of crowds in 
sport and recreation. He is a dashing 
workman, an excellent colorist and skillful 
composer both in water colors and in oils. 


He has lately been working less for pattern and sketchiness and more for mass. His work has a brilliant 
sort of elegance and a nice balance between illustrative and decorative considerations. Few of our younger 
painters catch so accurately the picturesque evanescences of the American spectacle. 


219 From the painting The Puff of Smoke in the Art Institute of Chicago 


phi’ 


iil 


are extraordinarily just and 
brilliant, with a true sense 

of the glamour of primi- 
tive life. 


LUMINISM AND ITS SEQUELS IN AMERICA, 1890 137 


JOHN LA FARGE, 
N.A., S.A.A. 


As we are approaching the 
application of Luministic 
methods to figure painting, 
we may profitably look 
backward thirty years to 
the Samoan water colors of 
John La Farge. In the late 
‘eighties, John La Farge 
with his friend Henry 
Adams made a yachting 
cruise in Polynesia, associ- 
ating closely with the gentle 
barbarians and actually ac- 
cepting membership in their 
tribes. La Farge’s South 
Sea records in water colors 


se oP ee 


220 From the painting in water color Aitutagata, the Hereditary Assassins of King Malietoa, Samoa, 
in the possession of Mrs. H. L. Higginson, Boston 


ANOTHER SOUTH SEA PICTURE BY LA FARGE 
Herz is another of La Farge’s just and vivid water colors of the picturesque customs of the Polynesian tribes. 
The imposition of his habitual elegance on these barbaric themes gives them a peculiar attractiveness. The 
suggestion of light, while keeping all the color at full saturation, is technically extraordinarily skillful. To 
place at the end of this chapter the water colors of John La Farge is to do violence to chronology. However, 
these remarkable paintings, like La Farge’s still earlier landscapes (No. 108), actually anticipate much that 


__ was essential in Impressionism, and they also show the compatibility of the new color with the old tradition 


of painting. In short, these sketches so accurately denote the reasonable American compromise with radical 
Luminism, that they may serve as a résumé of the entire movement in the United States. It will be 
seen that the whole Luminist 
movement in landscape, 
though profoundly in- 
fluenced technically from 
France, was in direct con- 
tinuation of that national 
love of natural appearances 
which speaks in the verse of 
Bryant and Whittier and in 
the prose of Cooper, Irving 
and Thoreau. It will also 
be noted that the scientific 
preoccupation with appear- 
ances has tended somewhat 
to lessen the subjective and 
poetical attitude toward 
landscape which came down 
from Cole, through Church, 
to Homer D. Martin and 
George Inness. 


ralthiby DSSete aaa 


ter color Samoan Girls Dancing the Seated Dance in the collection of 


221 ~+From the painting in wa 
W. S. Bigelow, Boston 


CHAPTER XV 


PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING, 1880-1895 


the figure, whether under natural or artificial ilumination, evidently offered a 
fascinating series of unsolved problems, which were attacked with energy. The 
fact that oddities of illumination actually tend to disintegrate the figure and to impair real 
portraiture we have already noted. Indeed, the best investigators of these appearances 
avoided the extreme roughness of Monet’s early manner, and drew rather from the finer 
and more thoughtful methods of Manet, Renoir and Degas. To enumerate them would 
be tedious, and, since they are famous, unnecessary. Mary Cassatt and Sargent of the 
Spanish Dancers are among the earliest; so are Chase's exquisitely studied interiors, 
and Benson’s and Tarbell’s. Hassam’s figures, indoors or out, are again distinguished 
items in the class. Alden Weir cared much for irradiation and made it a factor in intimacy 
and character. Wilton Lockwood handled with ability the dusky values of Whistler, 
and Dewing in his exquisite small figures mediates between the traditional manner and 
a pearliness which is of the new tendency. Evidently the quest has greatly extended 
the repertory of the painter, making possible what was impossible before. It has also 
facilitated that close study of men in crowds which is a rather new and promising pre- 
occupation of our recent art. . 
Figure painting may be roughly classified by the look of the painted surface. It is 
either unified, rather smooth and urbane, or broken into sharp areas with a certain 
abruptness of effect. The first method is the traditional academic way, that of George 
de Forest Brush or Kenyon Cox. It gives not the actual or vivid aspect, but the way the 
figure looks in memory after repeated study. ‘There is a large contribution of mind to the 
first observation. The second method rests on a quick and vivid notation of the essentials + 
of the momentary aspect. No interpretation or contribution of mind 1s wanted. The 
aim is to convey the first impression with truthfulness and vigor. It is the method of 
Hals and Velasquez in their latest manner, of Chase and Sargent among us, and it was 
formulated for all modern painting by Edouard Manet, active in Paris from the ‘fifties 
to the ’seventies. His simple and clear aim was to abstract from his observation every- - 
thing that he merely knew, and to set down emphatically only that which he really saw. 
To this end he made a scientific analysis of his seeing. He found that the eye does not 
recognize an object by thoroughly exploring its surfaces, but rather by picking up certain 
essential areas of color, which are the great constructional planes of the object. Once 
these planes are grasped, the recognition must follow, and the whole process is instan- 
taneous. The science of optics would have no quarrel with this view. 
This view cast a new light on the task of the realistic painter. His duty is simply to 
find the planes and to apply similar colored areas, taches, as Manet called them, to the 
138 


es quest of light naturally soon passed beyond the field of landscape. Indeed, 


PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING, 1880-1895 139 


eanvas. The sharp and vivid emphasis of his pictures shocked sensitive spirits but com- 
mended his theory to vigorous painters. It wi'l be seen that in standing on the momen- 
tary observation, and largely eliminating memory and mind, he was an Impressionist 
a generation before the word was coined. But he was not a Luminist in the narrow sense, 
caring only in his last years for accurate notation of the intricacies of natural color and 
light, liking the arranged light of his studio as well as that of the unmediated sun, using 
black freely when it served his turn, and having no regard for the prismatic palette and 
divided color. He was also not a Luminist in that he always cared more for structure 
than for subtle gradations of light, studying these not for themselves but chiefly as a 
means of construction — whereas for the thoroughgoing Luminist, structure is always 
incidental, a by-product of correct registration of the lighting. So, while Manet’s late, 
blond, open-air studies were the point of departure for Monet and his school, Manet’s 
earlier Velasquez-like figure pieces were the chief inspiration for his American emulators. 
From the ‘nineties they could see them in America, and, as early, some of the best were in 
the Luxembourg at Paris. 

Such men as Duveneck, Chase and Sargent caught the notion, partly from Manet, 
partly from the same old masters that inspired him. It was the right method for the 


painter who wished to convey keenly the look of things, without mental admixture, and 


it inevitably became standard for young American painters of the realistic stamp. Henri 
took the idea from Chase and remains its most prominent exponent. His art has the 
qualities and defects of its kind, great vividness on first sight, which often affords no 
reason for looking again, a lack of reflective quality and of richness. George Luks used 
and uses the method with care, energy and ability in his character portraits and street 
scenes. Fortunately he was too fundamentally an emotionalist to surrender to the re- 
quirement of impersonality. Glackens made his brilliant beginnings in this mode, until 
dissatisfied he sought more thoughtful and harmonious formulas. It is the basis of the 
structure of Jerome Myers, though he has adapted it in tender and whimsical senses. 
John Sloan has worked through it to finer and more intellectual notations in which 
interpretation counts as much as appearances. George Bellows made it the basis of his 
robust art. There is much of it in the sterling portraiture of the late Joseph De Camp, 
and in that of such relative novices as Louis Betts and Wayman Adams. Painters of 
this type represent what has become the central tradition of our figure painting, occupy- 
ing an intermediate position between such conservatives as Brush and Cox, and the 
new Expressionists. 

Like all strenuous investigations of appearance, the whole movement has been a 
wholesome one, incidentally a fine training for the average slack eye, and with the in- 
evitable disadvantage of all attitudes that tend to exclude from codperation with the 
outer eye the no less important eye of the mind. 


xXII—10 


140 


ay 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


222 From the painting A Ray of Sunlight in the Minneapolis 
Institute of Arts 


JOHN WHITE ALEXANDER, 
N.A., S.A.A., P.N.A. 


Or the European manner John W. Alexander made 
a very personal application, being guided by a 
native sense for the decorative. He was born in 
Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1856 and died in 
New York in 1915, much lamented, for he had been 
singularly friendly and serviceable. He began with 
magazine illustration with Abbey; later he studied 
at Munich, and with Duveneck at Venice, and was 
influenced by Whistler. As a portrait and mural 
painter, he developed a highly decorative manner, 
with arrangements in sweeping curves, low tonali- 
ties and thin pigment, and withal, an alert and 
delicate sentiment. (See also No. 166.) 


ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM, N.A., 5.A.A. 


THE counsel of exquisite execution which moved 
all the new men was carried to its highest point by - 
Robert F. Blum. Born in 1857 at Cincinnati, he 
died in New York in 1903. His early training was 
as a lithographer and illustrator. Blum traveled 
widely and finally worked out a brilliant style of 
his own under the influence of such great technicians 
as Alfred Stevens and Fortuny. He was long 
resident in Japan where he painted some of his 
best pictures. A versatile and cosmopolitan 


spirit, his early death was a great loss to American art. In elegance of conception and draftmanship 
none of his American contemporaries excelled him. (See also Nos. 171, 441, 515-16.) 


223 


From the painting Venetian Lacemakers in the Cincinnati Museum Association 


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THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


portrait of William M. Chase in the 
olitan Museum of Art, New York 


227 From the painting The Four Doctors in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore 


SARGENT’S PORTRAIT OF CHASE 


Tur audacity and brilliancy of Sargent’s mature style are 
well exhibited in this portrait of a fellow-artist. It is flicked 
on the canvas with the lightness of a Frans Hals and is 
also full of Chase’s robust and quizzical character. It 
was painted in 1902 and was carried through in a single 
sitting of a few hours. To many it will seem over-asserted, 
but it is undoubtedly as both Chase and Sargent wanted 
it to be. 


SARGENT’S FOUR FAMOUS PHYSICIANS 


Tuts group of the four famous physicians, Osler, Halsted, 
Kelly and Councilman, reveals Sargent in the maturity of 
his powers, about 1903, and in its dignity and character 
seems as perfect an example of an institutional picture as 
America has produced. By this time Sargent was very 
weary of portrait painting, and was turning off perfunctory 
work at times, but the personalities of these four great 
specialists, pioneer professors of the medical school of Johns 
Hopkins University, inspired him to recover all the serious- 
ness and sobriety of his earlier manner. Compositionally 


the picture is very interesting in that the widely scattered 


and apparently casually arranged figures fill their big space 
admirably, and the space itself seems to share the medita- 
tive seriousness of the great scientists who occupy it. (See 
also Nos. 172-73, 211-12). 


143 


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230 From the portrait of Horace Howard Furness in the 
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 


DOUGLAS VOLK, N.A., S.A.A. - 


Dovuetas VoLK, who was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 
in 1856, is, again, a portrait painter of the objective tradi- 
tion, varying his vein with ideal compositions like that 
which we reproduce. His method is more linear than is 
the fashion, since he was a faithful pupil of Géréme in 
Paris, but Volk handles the line with elegance and tact. 
He is a portrait and figure painter of a precise and dili- 
gent temper with a constant idealism, and one of the best 
American representatives of the conservative Academic 
tradition of the ’seventies. As we have already observed, 
there are distinct advantages in the older methods of 
portrait painting, for they are methods of interpretation 
rather than of representation. 


e portrait of S. Weir Mitchell in the Pennsylvania 


232 
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 


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JOSEPH RODEFER DE CAMP, N.ILA.L. 


JosEPH Dr Camp also was a portraitist of objective char- 
acter and forceful in' representation though without much 


He was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1858 and 


died at Bocagrande, Florida, in 1923. De Camp’s straight- 
forward and masculine talent was akin to Duveneck’s 
whose pupil he became, studying later at the Royal Academy 
at Munich. As a portraitist De Camp was a worthy in- 


his first master’s robust directness, leaving ex- 


cellent likenesses of many famous contemporaries, as this of 
the greatest American Shakespearian. 


When so much 
rtraiture is approximate and chiefly decorative, 


one should be especially grateful to those unassuming 
painters who are content to leave us faithful records. 


231 From the painting The Boy with the Arrow in the 
National Gallery of Art, Washington 


ROBERT VONNOH, N.A., S.A.A. 


Mucu that has been said about Douglas Volk is 
true of Robert Vonnoh, but Vonnoh’s vein is 
more delicate. This tends to stylize his portraits 
somewhat at the expense of that objective reality 
which he earnestly seeks. Vonnoh was born at 
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1858. He studied in 
the Massachusetts Normal Art School and under 
Boulanger and Lefebvre at Paris. He is a 
portraitist of distinction in the linear academic 
style, as in this portrait of a great neurologist 
who was also a graceful author. Vonnoh has also 
painted a few landscapes of an austerely charming 
precision. 


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PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING, 1880-1895 147 


237 From the painting A Follower of Grolier in the Detroit Institute of Arts 


EDMUND CHARLES TARBELL, 
NAS SrAcA., N.LA.L, 
Wirn Tarbell, although he has made many sober 
and characterful portraits, the light tends to take 
command of the picture. Such is the case with 
the canvas which we reproduce. Born at West 
Groton, Massachusetts, in 1862, Tarbell was a 
pupil of the Boston Museum school and of 
Boulanger and Lefebvre at Paris. A portraitist 
and figure painter of great skill and versatility, 
he at first gave himself to the study of complexities 
of illumination, but latterly has devoted himself 
to admirable interiors in the Dutch manner and 
to professional portraiture. Merely as an exec- 
utant few contemporary painters equal him. 
Tarbell’s earliest period of apprenticeship was 
served in the lithographic establishment of 
W. H. Forbes Co., Boston. This work, more or 
less routine in its nature, developed a draftsman- 


ship and sensitiveness to the beauty of lines and _ 


forms that were never submerged in his subsequent 
enthusiasm for the fashionable innovations of the 
Luminists. “Discard scale, relativity, depth,” 
the Parisian canons of the ’eighties dictated, 
“Make the lower values as they are in nature, 
even though the higher notes fuse into indeter- 
minate chalkiness.”” And Tarbell assimilated for 
his own purposes the new technique. 


JULIAN ALDEN WEIR, 
WrAg PNA: 


Wirn J. Alden Weir the interest is always 
on character, but in rendering it he always 
sought specific settings and lightings that 
further defined and enhanced the person- 
ality of the sitter. Weir was a portraitist 
and landscapist of rare distinction, making 
his own adaptation of the methods of the 
Impressionists. In his early work Weir 
emphasized the lower register of tones, 
verging sometimes on darkness. Both 
Whistler and the modern Hague school 
influenced him. Afterwards he met 
Manet, admired the brilliance of his work, 
and attempted to impart the same quality 
to his own. Always an experimentalist, 
he attempted a third tonal scheme, more 
akin to the darker first period. He was a 
devout student of the moods of American 
landscape and an even more intimate 
interpreter of the delicacy and moral 
fastidiousness of American womanhood of 
the old stock. Similar portraits are in the 
museums of New York, Washington, 
Boston and Pittsburgh. (See also Nos. 
200, 440.) 


From the painting The Venetian Blind in the Worcester 
Art Museum, Worcester, Mass, 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


From the painting Girl Crocheting in the possession of C. V. Wheeler, Washington 


TARBELL IN HIS MATURE STYLE 

Arter the Venetian Blind, a brilliant example of Tarbell’s early Luminist phase, follows perhaps the finest 
example of his mature style. It is exquisitely composed in pattern, and the lighting and textures are ren- 
dered most subtly. Upon a dozen pictures of this sort, redolent of the quietness of the old Dutch masters, 
rests Tarbell’s great reputation. One should not overlook the value of such painting as record. From 
Tarbell’s later work a social historian would be able to reconstruct the kind of life that was led in the modest. 
country places of New England, the decorum of that life and its profoundly eclectic character. ‘The 
crocheting girl sits on a Gothic chair, before a copy of Velasquez and Japanese prints, before a colonial 
gate-legged table. These things are a parable. 


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PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING, 1880-1895 149 


FRANK WESTON BENSON, 
N.A., N.ILA.L. 


Most professional portraitists wisely avoid the 
distracting conditions of painting portraits in 
the open air. Under these conditions the 
portrait usually becomes a figure piece. Frank 
Benson (No. 193) has fairly coped with this 
problem in his numerous portraits and groups 
in outdoor conditions. For such work he 
employs the bright palette of the Impression- 
ists. A fresh and wholesome talent of high 
average accomplishment, he has painted in his 
last years a few large still lifes of extraordinary 
dignity of arrangement and richness of color. 


HORATIO WALKER, 
Nog ena, .N.LA.L. 


Naturauty, the few American painters who 
had concerned themselves with the theme of 
work in the fields welcomed the Luministic 
inventions. Among the best of these painters 
is Horatio Walker, who was born at Listowel, 
Ontario, Canada, in 1858, and came to New 
York in 1885. He is a vigorous painter with 
unusual technical resources, who renders scenes 
of toil in the fields and woods with much energy 
but without achieving fine composition or dis- 


ees # ae 


240 From the painting A7y Daughter Elizabeth in the Detroit 
Institute of Arts 


tinction of sentiment. He has received many honors. It may be argued that Walker’s work is too real to be 
completely effective. Millet’s generalizations enhanced the theme of toil while keeping a satisfactory sense 
of environment. In a fine Walker the interest is somewhat perplexingly distributed between the worker and 
the place and time in which he works. He is, however, our best painter within his own field of rural toil, 
losing something perhaps from a too self-conscious attitude toward his themes. (See also No. 156.) * 


han seco estllion 


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241 From the painting The Woodcutters in the City Art Museum, St. Louis 


150 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILTON LOCKWOOD, N.A. 


Witton Locxwoop (see also No. 192) grows not out of 
Manet, but rather out of the parallel dark impressionism of 
Whistler. His carefully deliberative and very interpre- 
tative portrait of his first master, John La Farge, is here 
introduced chiefly for the sake of contrast with the more 
assertive and swiftly caught portraits which follow. It 
is the dilemma of all portraiture that the vivid first im- 
pression has something precious which disappears with 
elaboration. But a first impression rarely begins to con- 
vey the richness of a subtle and complicated personality. 
One may say that a painter-sage of La Farge’s subtlety 
simply could not have been represented in the excellent 
style, in itself, of the portraits which follow. 


242 From the portralt of John La Farge in the Museum 
of Fine Arts, Boston 


ROBERT HENRI, N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.D. 


On the other hand, Manet’s swift notations of the broad 
facts of structure well suited the painters whose forte is 
curiosity and gusto. The acknowledged leader of this 
clan is Robert Henri. He was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, 
in 1865 and studied in the schools of Cincinnati, New 
York and Philadelphia; at Paris at Julian’s and the 
Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Henri is a figure painter and 
portraitist, with occasional excursions in landscape. He 
paints broadly from the first impression. Raciness, sym- 
pathy and energy are the qualities of his art; impatience 


and occasional flimsiness are its shortcomings. 
- 


243 From the painting Julianita Ready for the Dance 
in the possession of the artist 


GEORGE BENJAMIN LUKS 


Grorar B. Luks uses the summary methods of Manet to 
express urgent emotions of surprise or social sympathy. His 
Impressionism recalls somewhat that of Charles Dickens. 
Luks was born at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1867. 
Educated at the Pennsylvania Academy and at Diisseldorf, 
Luks was an illustrator in the War with Spain, and later an 
effective political cartoonist. His art is one of keen emotion 
and gusto directed toward the commonest persons and things; 
his method is rich and summary with more than a hint of 
Manet in it, but with a richer tonality and a more spon- 
taneous attack, Luks, an uneven but a thoroughly live 
painter, and at his best one of the greatest American painters 
of our times, has also done a few official portraits of great 
solidity and dignity, notably that of Elilu Root. The pres- 
ent picture reveals the swiftness and intensity of his vision in 


244 From the painting 7'he Old Duchess in the ' eh » tahinh vc = ae = 
porn the Pan Museum of Art, New York a portraiture which is also kindly caricature. 


PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING, 1880-1895 151 


54 4 


Lui 


245 From the painting The Blue Devils Marching Up Fifth Avenue in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington 


A STIRRING MILITARY PICTURE BY LUKS 


Lexs has painted many brilliant pictures in and about New York, but none finer than this march of the 
platoon of French veterans which did so much to arouse the fighting spirit of America. The succinct indi- 
cations of place and motion are of the surest, and the whole sketch is tinglingly alive. Luks’ versatility 
makes any complete account of his work impossible in a summary survey. Aside from his visions of work 
and play among the poor, subjects which enlist his peculiar sympathy, he has painted what we may call 
official portraits of a dignity and character which the accredited portraitists of academic bent hardly com- 
mand. Of recent years Luks has been usefully active as a teacher in the Art Students’ League. During 
the World War our American painters and illustrators loyally did their bit, both in organized and individual 
efforts. On the whole the art thus evoked served its purpose of spurring patriotic sentiment and was of 
small importance otherwise. Indeed war conditions are always unfavorable to the fine arts, and when the 
benefit comes, as sometimes it does, it comes well after the war when the harsh facts have assumed some 
glamour of legend. What little still seems memorable from the war contribution of our artists may be quite 
briefly told. Surely the first place should go to those few’sketches made with a steely veracity by John Sargent 
in the British trenches. George Bellows both in painting and lithography treated the theme of the atrocities 
with the energy of indignation, but he left only one really fine war picture, that of Edith Cavell moving 
quietly toward the steps which lead to the firing squad. Joseph Pennell extended and enriched his old 
subject matter, the wonder of work, by admirable sketches in many mediums of the munition factories and 
the shipyards. Childe Hassam made stirring pictures of the New York avenues hung with snapping flags 
for the victory. Such perhaps is the small permanent residuum from a considerable patriotic effort. 


246 From the painting The Sulking Boy in the Phillips Memorial 
Gallery, Washington 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


LUKS’ STUDY OF CHILD CHARACTER 


Tuis is a perfect reading of child character, 
on which Luks is our best interpreter, and a 
clean, sure, strong and delicate bit of painting. 
Luks has many pictures of this sort to his 
credit, including the charming canvas of danc- 
ing girls, The Spielers. 


WILLIAM J. GLACKENS, §.A.A., A.N.A. 
A MORE austere and conscious experimentalism 
has guided the talent of W. J. Glackens. He 
was born in 1870 at Philadelphia, and studied 
at the Academy there and later independently 
in Europe. An admirable illustrator in his 
young manhood, he soon turned to portrait and 
figure painting in the dark manner of Manet. 
Here he developed a rare gift for catching the 
character of a person or a scene, combining 
discretion and thoughtfulness with freshness 
and energy of workmanship. (See also No. 
278.) Of late years he has passed out of the 
dark impressionism of his beginnings, making 
his construction in full color and with the 
subtler differences of hue. We represent him 
by a fine portrait group in this fully developed 
phase, regretting that considerations of space 
do not permit the inclusion of his equally 
admirable early painting. We shall find a 


reasonable equivalent therefor when we return to Glackens in the chapter on Illustration (No. 532). 


247 


From the painting The Family Group in the possession of the artist 


PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING, 1880-1895 153 


JOHN SLOAN 


JOHN SLOAN brings to the 

study of the life of the 

poor in New York an odd 

and refreshing blend of 

sardonic criticism and 

covert sympathy. Born 

at Lockhaven, Pennsyl-_ 
vania, in 1871, Sloan was 

a student of the Pennsyl- 

vania Academy. Whether 

in painting, etching or 

lithography he is a most 

tenacious observer and 

executant, rendering his 

themes, often from low 

life of the city, with an 

understanding as com- 

plete as it is grim and 

pitiless. Thus he gives 

true aspects of the under- 

world in a style in itself 

of great refinement. Sloan 

has been prominent in all independent and anti-academic movements among artists. His distinction is 
both of an intellectual and technical sort. Perhaps no other contemporary at once sees and draws so 
lucidly. (See also No. 455. 


ast Si a 


248 From the painting Jn the Wake of the Ferry in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington 


GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS, N.A., N.I.A.L. 


A GREAT geniality and a rather undisciplined sympathy directed the too short endeavor of George Bellows, 
who was born at Columbus, Ohio, in 1882 and died at New York in 1925. Bellows worked with Maratta 
in Chicago and with Henri in New York, and very easily won recognition as a painter of portraits and figure 
compositions. He was an artist of energy and rare gusto, and full of character, in pictures of prize fights 
and religious revivals, but without fine color or restraining taste. He was a powerful but not a fine draftsman, 
and is included as such in 
the section on lithography 
(No. 464). Under his 
superficial easy-goingness, 
Bellows was a self-critical 
spirit and never rested on 
past achievements. He 
knew his weaknesses and 
was resolutely working to 
correct them when death 
cut him off at the early 
age of forty-three. The 
veracity of his mood 
should keep the best of 
his pictures alive. This is 
one of his early striking 
pictures which won the 
encomiums of his constant 
champion, that admirable 
critic, the late James 
Huneker. 


249 From the painting A Stag at Sharkey’s in the Cleveland Museum of Art 


154 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


#. 


250 From the painting Zleanor, Jean and Anna in the Buff 


From the painting Scene in a Restaurant in the 
possession of the artist 


alo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, N. Y. 


BELLOWS’ LAST PHASE 


GrorGE Brtiows’ later and more thoughtful style 
is admirably represented in this family group which 
exemplifies the growing sobriety and solidity of his 
talent, in its last phase. The work is entirely com- 
pelling in expression of character, somewhat harsh 
in execution and negative in color, and perhaps too 
formally composed. 


GUY PENE DU BOIS 


Or the many painters of night life in New York none 
really rival Guy Péne Du Bois in concentration. He 
extracts the essence of a character or situation in a 
fashion that delights reflective spirits like his own, 
but baffles the casual person completely. For this 
reason, Du Bois has never had the popularity that 
his very distinguished talent deserves. He was born 
at New York in 1884, and was a pupil there of Chase, 
Henri and Du Mond, and of Steinlen at Paris. 
Du Bois is a close and often ironical observer of the 
spectacle of low life and sporting life in Manhattan, 
and an admirable workman in the realistic vein. As 
befits a very intellectual type of painter, Du Bois 
has made successful excursions in the field of art 
criticism. 


CHAPTER XVI 


RECENT VISIONARIES — THE MODERNISTS 


N work of the fully intellectualized imagination, whether in letters or in the arts, 
America has been rather poor. The offset to our prevailing realism has been a habit 
of dreaming at large which engages less the imagination than what Coleridge calls 

the fancy. In this vein much of our most characteristic work has been done. It is the 
vein of Hawthorne and Poe, Herman Melville at his best being more deeply imaginative. 
Among the painters whom we have called the Early Visionaries most are masters of fancy. 
Only Ryder habitually and Vedder occasionally seem true imaginatives. Possibly only 
Rockwell Kent among contemporaries is one. The mood visionary may be regarded as 
an escape from the increasing tyranny of facts, as the protest of the artist against the 
intrusion of the practical and scientific spirit in the realm of the arts. Many of our best 
painters share this attitude; and, while it is rarely productive of the greatest art, it fosters 
nearly always an art that is full of refreshment. After Dreiser, one might be glad to re- 
read Hawthorne; after Winslow Homer and John Sloan, one might be glad to scan 
Maurice Prendergast and Arthur B. Davies. 

In the New York Armory Show of 1913, the Modernists’ pictures, which had been 
produced for fifteen years in Europe, got their first conspicuous exhibition in America. 
The strangeness and apparent ugliness of the work caused a sensation. With the Euro- 
peans, a sprinkling of young Americans of similar advanced tendencies showed their work. 
Their numbers have since grown, they have enlisted able critical championship, and the 
movement, for better or worse, is here and will not be laughed away. 

The Modernist movement began about 1890 in France as a reaction against the 
impersonality of triumphant Impressionism. The precursors were Vincent van Gogh 
and Paul Gauguin, artists of high emotional tension and of somewhat grotesque power, 
and Paul Cézanne, an eccentric doctrinaire of high intellectual ability. The issue of 
Gauguin and van Gogh against Impressionism was that, being professedly impersonal, 
it lacked emotional force. It was a just criticism. In their practice they both demanded 
the freest expression of emotion, and this implied that they were to be in no way bound 
by natural appearances. Emotion was to create its own forms with or without aid from 
nature. Hence what seemed willful distortion to the layman was for them really the 
creative emotion expressing itself freely. This is the basis of the doctrine which, from 
the point of view of chronology simply, is called Post-Impressionism. The more defining 
name is Expressionism. Henri Matisse is the leader in France, and he has now many 
followers in America. | 

The error of the theory is manifest. It is true that art should be expressive of emo- 
tion, true that Impressionism usually was not enough so, but it does not follow that the 
reason should not guide the emotion, nor yet that a due respect for natural appearances 
hampers any emotional expression that is worth while. In short, the Expressionists 
ignored the always pertinent question of value, assumed that the artist was free from all 
constraint, including that of his own reason, and appealed to an anarchistic individualism 
in the name of liberty. 

The works were, according to the theory, rough, distorted sketches in raw and un- 
natural colors, without precedent in nature and art, save the art of the Congo savages. 


XII—11 155 


156 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


The execution was very summary, for the creative, emotional detonation is necessarily 
of brief duration, and the whole effort was toward simplicity and emphasis. The move- 
ment has in my opinion produced few works of value, but it has encouraged simplicity of 
composition, and a bolder use of color, and has given new formulas for expressing mass. 

Cézanne rejected the Impressionism in which he had experimented, not for lack of 
emotional content, but for its superficial contentment with momentary appearances and 
its neglect of essentials of structure. These essentials he redefined in an interesting and 
rather scientific spirit. Nature consists in large structural planes which are in dynamic 
relations of balance and thrust, hence implicitly in motion. Ascertain and render these 
planes, and you will obtain the fullest because the most intellectualized sense of reality 
and of mass. His practice, which was uncertain, really that of an amateur, at its best 
fully realized his theories. He did obtain a grim and impressive effect of mass and of 
nature that never rests. To emphasize the essentials of mass, he freely practiced dis- 
tortions and amputations, not as the Expressionists did for personal and emotional 
reasons, but for greater truthfulness than lay in the uninterpreted appearance. He also 
held, here merely exaggerating a well-known truth of optics, that the contrasting forms of 
nature are actually warping each other and producing illusions. He preferably built his 
pictures in great geometrical planes tilting upon each other, and this was the starting 
point of Cubism. 

That movement, again an intellectualistic one, we do not need to discuss, for in its 
uncompromising form it was never much followed in America, while, abroad, it has already 
passed. Its legacy is merely a tendency to compose in geometric patterns — a harmless 
and often an amusing expedient, and less novel than it seems. 

Cézanne’s deeper quest of reality has in one way or another influenced many of our 
older painters for good. In particular, he has badly shaken the cult of the time-of-day 
picture and called attention to what is permanent in nature. He has also enlarged the 
modeling effect of pure color. 

As a whole, the Modernists have been better framers of theories than painters of pic- 
tures, and the value of their innovations is still open to question. Their program seems 
tainted, on the one hand, by an oversubjective impulsivism, and on the other by a quite 
eccentric intellectualism — in plainer words, seems either crazy or cranky. Their 
diagnosis of the weakness of Impressionism seems entirely sound; but if their pictures 
are the remedy, the remedy may be worse than the disease. It is still too early to dog- 
matize about a movement that has had hardly fifteen years of life in America. Instead 
I have noted in the captions the older artists who have been influenced by Modernist 
theory and practice, and will add, to conclude, a few pictures by what seem to me the 
abler figures of the Modernist group. Many of recent prominence are excluded by our 
general dead line of the Armory Exhibition of 1913. This is the less regrettable because 
any judgment of their work would be warped by present urgent controversies and by the 
limitations of my own experience and sympathy. It is the task for a younger critic and 
for a later time. Meanwhile, it is clear that of all artistic fashions which have come to 
America this is by far the most alien and exotic. If we have to do with a world movement, 
that is no objection. In the other case — that we may be merely taking up passing fads 
of Paris, Berlin and Milan — Modernism may be said to be distinctly on the defensive 
with all the presumptions against it. 

A number of good contemporary painters whose work does not clearly fall into the 
previous classifications are grouped at the end of this chapter. The captions will suffi- 
ciently inform the reader as to their style. The great variety of manners represented 
speaks eloquently of the confusing individualism of the present moment, and explains 
the motive of that branch of the Modernists which is resolutely seeking a universal basis 
for pictorial style. 


— 


RECENT VISIONARIES 


THE MODERNISTS 157 


Mee ss. ta he 


llips Memorial Gallery, Washington 


MAURICE BRAZIL PRENDERGAST 


Lone before Modernism was heard of Maurice Prendergast practiced it in the broad blotches of pure color 


which, neglecting details, assert the larger facts of form. He was born in 1861, at Boston, and died at New 
York in 1924. Prendergast studied like his contemporaries at Julian’s, Colorassi and the Ecole des Beaux- 


Arts, at Paris, but rejected this teaching 
and created a very personal style which 
finds its closest precedent in that of 
Monticelli. Prendergast became a highly 
imaginative figure painter, employing broad 
touches of pure color, as an expressive 
mosaic, to suggest the play of sunlight upon 
figures and crowds. His art is throughout 
of an idyllic and decorative type, abounding 
in warmth, light and vitality. 


ARTHUR B. DAVIES 


Artuur B. Davizs (see also No. 178) is a 
master dreamer, but his dream world is 
parallel with the world that exists and is 
firmly founded. Davies began as an illus- 
trator, but soon passed to idyllic figure 
compositions in landscape, suggestive of 
the Venetian Renaissance manner, of which 
this is a fine example; later, partly under 
the influence of Blake, he worked in a more 
symbolic and less colorful style, and was 
transiently attracted by the geometrical 
patterns of the Cubists. In all phases he 
is a powerful and fastidious draftsman and 
a subtle and exquisite composer. He is not 
ashamed of the old ideal of painting as 
2 sort of visible poetry. (See also Nos. 
457, 466.) 


253 From the painting The Throne in the possession of Miss L. Bliss, New York 


158 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


254 From the painting Rose to Rose in’the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington 


A PICTURE IN DAVIES’ EARLY MANNER 


Herz is a picture which illustrates consummately the warmth and richness of Mr. Davies’ early maturity. 
It is an art as enchanting in color as it is in mood. These are precious qualities which Mr. Davies was soon 
and quite logically to sacrifice in the pursuit of more intellectual and abstract ideals. Color is so important 
at all stages in Davies’ designs that our excellent monochrome illustrations are in his case even farther than 
usual from the truth. One must think of the upper picture as in warm, saturated colors; the lower one 
as in pale tones of gray and green. 


AN EXAMPLE OF DAVIES’ LATER MANNER 


Hers is a fine picture in the new manner — more tense in expression, less varied and obviously rich in color, 
more remote in its appeal, more completely personal. The motive of this rare and lovely vision is a sentence 
of George Meredith’s — ‘Huntress of things worth pursuit of souls; in our naming, dreams.” It illustrates 
an early phase of that tendency toward expressive distortion which has constantly increased in Davies’ later 
work. 


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RECENT VISIONARIES — THE MODERNISTS 159 


256 From the painting The Girdle of Ares in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


A DAVIES LANDSCAPE WITH MYTHOLOGICAL FIGURES 


From his early time Davies has been a fine landscapist. In his later manner he cares less for the color, warmth 
and richness of the natural scene than for its scale and grandeur. This is a superb example of those solemn 
idyls and mythologies which the artist, inspired by the Sierra Mountains, began to create from about 1910. 
The massive rhythm of the mountains is contrasted most effectually with the lighter and more vehement 
rhythm of the figures. The silvers and ceruleans are characteristic of the color of this period, as the Venetian 
crimsons and azures are of the earlier idyls. Davies’ fertile and distinguished fancy is sustained by the 
severest studies. Perhaps no artist of our time has drawn so much. Thus his most subjective visions retain 
a sort of reality and his production, while he has essayed many manners, has never sunk into mannerism. 


BRYSON BURROUGHS, S.A.A., A.N.A. 


Bryson Burrovucus illustrates the effects for good and evil of our very complicated civilization upon every 
searching and critical spirit. Drinking from many cups, he has yet managed to remain his own man. Born 
at Hyde Park, Massachusetts, in 1869, he studied at the Art Students’ League and independently at Paris. 
He was much influenced by the decorative idealism of Puvis de Chavannes and by eclectic study of the 
Early Italians. A pene- 

trating and often ironical 

interpreter of classical 

and medizeval legend, he 
is as well a master of 
the decorative aspects of 
landscape. A somewhat 
sardonic and eminently 
playful idealism in his art 
makes it unappreciated 
by the public as it is a 
peculiar delight to the 
sophisticated. In setting 
an old folk-tale in New 
York’s Central Park in the 
now remote nineties, the 
present picture is very 
characteristic of the whim- 
sical humor of its creator. 


257 From the painting The Princess and the Swineherd in the possession of the artist 


160 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA E 


JEROME MYERS, 
A.N.A. 


THE swarming spectacle of 
New York’s East Side was 
first frankly suggested by 
Jerome Myers, and in his 
later work woven into 
fantastic patterns which 
are remarkable for their 
somber beauty of color. 
Myers was born at Peters- 
burg, Virginia, in 1867, 


and followed his studies 7 

at the Cooper Union and i 

the Art Students’ League. : 

He has wrought out of the ‘ 

spectacle of the New York 4 

slums compositions of im- . 

aginative beauty, com- q 

: eee ee ees bining rare truth of ob- E 

258 From the painting Hvening at the Pier in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington servation with a summary 3 

and powerful workmanship and a rare sense of the spirit and movement of things. He is an exquisite ob- ; 

server of the attitudes of small children. One may well call him an idyllist of the slums. The illustration t 

represents him in that early phase which won him fame. His later work, ostensibly on the old themes, ; 

has been of a more fantastic quality. : 

AUGUSTUS VINCENT ; 

TACK . 

Avaustus Vincent Tack’s ver- ; 

satile production ranges from c 

portraits of solid authority : 

through deeply emotionalized re- 

ligious subjects, to landscapes of 

fairly Chinese largeness and deli- 

cacy. He was born at Pittsburgh, 7 
Pennsylvania, in 1870, studied at 

the Yale School of the Fine Arts 


and was a pupil of Mowbray, 
La Farge and Merson. In all his 
work Tack is a constant experi- 
menter in the use of broken and 
loaded color to produce effects of 
light and envelopment; he seeks 
not the specific illumination of 
the Impressionists, from whom he 
has learned much, but “the light 
that never was, on sea or land.” 
An entirely lucid mysticism gives 
him a place apart among con- 
temporary painters. Tack is an 
excellent portraitist and mural 


Sy a Oo 


painter in a more objective vel. 259 From the painting House of Matthew in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


RECENT VISIONARIES— THE MODERNISTS 161 


260 From the painting Lonely Road in the possession of George Mathew Adams, New York 


EUGENE HIGGINS, A.N.A. 
EvGene Hicerns is a humanitarian, hence a pure romantic. His personal emotion overflows readily into 
every sort of theme, and his undoubted power has a certain superficiality and lack of inner discipline. He 
was born at Kansas City, Missouri, in 1874 and followed the teaching of Laurens, Constant, Géréme and the 


Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His is a romantic spirit with a 
fine emphasis of composition and rich color. His 
figure subjects, sometimes purely fanciful, are often 
from the world of toil. (See No. 454.) 


KENNETH HAYES MILLER 


KennetH Hayes Minter may be included among 
the visionaries though he has not in the same sense 
been able to create his own forms. Indeed his vision 
has often an air of being too much willed. He was 
born at Kenwood, New York, in 1876, and was a 
pupil of the Art Students’ League and of Chase. He 
is a painter of mystical and uneven temperament who 
found in his fellow mystic, Ryder, a congenial subject 
and made much of it. It is a subjective kind of 
portraiture rarely practiced in America and akin to 
some of the highly generalized portraits of G. F. Watts, 
as the Tennyson. The endeavor is to embody the 
Ryder of legend rather than to tell precisely how the 
poet-painter looked to his landlady. Much of Miller’s 
work has been in the idyllic nude, in forms vaguely re- 
calling George Fuller, but without Fuller’s authority. 


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261 From the portrait of Albert P. Ryder in the Phillips 
Memorial Gallery, Washington 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


162 


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RECENT VISIONARIES— THE MODERNISTS 163 


263 From the painting The Dance of the Elements in the possession of Carl W. Hamilton, 
New York 


MAURICE STERNE 


To represent the swarming crowds of the South Seas, 
Maurice Sterne has had recourse to geometrical 
simplifications and repetitions similar to those of the 
decorative Cubists. He was born in 1863 in London, 
of American parents, made his first studies at Bir- 
mingham, England, and continued with Boulanger, 
Lefebvre and Géréme in Paris. As an etcher and 
figure painter he has shifted from a strenuous linear 
manner to the freer methods of expressionism. He 
has lived at Bali, Polynesia, and made there re- 
markable studies of its barbaric life. Sterne has a 
somber and appropriate color. As a linear draftsman 
few contemporaries equal him. 


ROBERT WINTHROP CHANLER 


Roxsert CHANLER’S ingenious and fantastic screens 
with birds and animals were the chief American 
novelty of the Armory show in 1913. In these 
nervous and fastidious arrangements there are remi- 
niscences of Persian art. They are extraordinarily 
decorative and the method has been as effective in 
mural painting. The novelty is the extreme compli- 
cation of the pattern which is well held together by a 
fairly uniform force and character of the stroke. For 
example, the decorative design in the present example 
is solidly built around the bristling quills of the 


: 264 From the painting Porcupines, loaned by Mrs. John Jay 
porcupines. Chapman to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


a 


164 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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265 From the painting River Effect, Paris, 1908, in the collection of A, E. Gallatin, New York 


JOHN MARIN ; 


Joun Marin began as a water colorist and etcher in the Impressionistic style. This he soon abandoned in 
favor of great simplification and selected emphasis. Marin was born at Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1875. 
A student at the Pennsylvania Academy, Art Students’ League, Delecluse Academy, Paris, Marin latterly 
has sought the extreme simplifications of the Modernist school, using color not descriptively but to create the , 
desired illusion. His restless experimentalism produces, with many relative failures, a few of the finest s 
paintings created in our times. River Effect shows Marin still relatively interested in facts, but well on the 
way to his later abstract style. (See also No. 450.) 


WALTER PACH 


As an engineering construction the 
modern city is inherently geometri- 
cal, and in the suggestion of its 
streets and buildings the Modernist 
painters have found a reasonable 
subject matter for the devices of 
decorative Cubism. Walter Pach 
uses these formulas expressively to 
secure a sense of pause and stability 
amid the rush. Our illustration 
shows the value of this method. 
Born at New York in 1883, Walter 
Pach was a pupil of Leigh Hunt, 
Chase and Henri. He has skill- 
fully adopted the Cubist formulas, 
latent in the scene itself, to the 
suggestion of life in New York City. 
Prominent as an administrator of 
the Independent Artists, he is also 
a critical champion of the Modernist ‘ 
tendencies. } 


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RECENT VISIONARIES— THE MODERNISTS 165 


CHARLES DEMUTH 


CuarLes DemutH has applied a 
similar geometrical method to ex- 
press the character of small towns. 
Like most moderate Cubists he re- 
duces the color in order to emphasize 
the formal pattern, but his color 
within its range of pale tints is highly 
effective. Demuth was a pupil of 
the Pennsylvania Academy. He isa 
fastidious composer, studying with 
equal composure and often in 
Quaker-like grays and browns the 
essential forms of flowers, acro- 
bats and buildings. This Cubist ab- 
straction for a mass of factories 
is thoroughly characteristic of his 
delicately intellectual vein. In spite 
of his incidental lapses into pure 
abstraction, there is in all of Demuth’s 
paintings a supporting foundation 
of familiar realism. He is conven- 
tional enough in a number of his 
paintings; and even in the more 
extreme, the nebulous arcs and tan- 
gents which he has superimposed are 
not necessarily distracting. They 
are like the facetious, meaningless 
titles he often gives his paintings — a 
bit antagonizing to the orthodox. A 
Modernist does not wish to be under- 
stood and appreciated too quickly. 


267 From the painting The Milltown in the possession of W. C. Williams, New York 


MARSDEN HARTLEY 


Tue restless versatility of Mars- 
den Hartley has perhaps stood 
more in the way of his success 
than his eccentric modernism. 
To succeed an artist must oc- 
casionally pause long enough to 
be understood. Hartley has 
rapidly passed through a solid 
Impressionism to a sober con- 
structionism allied to Cézanne’s, 
and has come out in a highly 
simplified Expressionism rep- 
resented by Still Infe. In all 
these phases Hartley has com- 
manded fine color and vitality. 
He has also written vivaciously 
on dancing, including Indian 
ceremonial dancing, and vaude- 
ville. Hartley is a capital 
example of the uprooted painter 
—a quite modern and by no 
means reassuring apparition. 


Be a cy Be iis e 
F Sa & is CAS 


268 From the painting Still Life in the possession of Mrs. Florence Cane, New York 


166 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


‘ind and Trees — Green, Yellow and Blue in the collection of 
Alfred Stieglitz, New York 


269 From the painting W 


ARTHUR GARFIELD DOVE 


Artuur Dove’s solid and richly brushed abstrac- 
tions for familiar forms are nearly allied to deco- 
rative Cubism. He seeks emphasis of form by 
diminishing the color, which is chosen solely for 
its expressive quality. His usual procedure is to 
magnify what in nature is a small motive. Dove 
is regarded by the Modernists as one of their 
strongest men. He works in abstractions re- 
motely derived from natural forms. For example, 
the forms of leaves worked out in a geometrical 
sense suffice to motivate a composition, and the 
geometry of the present picture suggests lines of 
force, resistance, and bending. 


GEORGIA O’KEEFE 


GrorciA O’KEEre works at times in the synco- 
pated and simple geometrical manner of Cézanne, 
with easily recognizable subject matter, and also 
in abstract forms akin to those of the Futurists, 
commanding in either vein dignity of composition 
and rare force of color. The abstraction for music 
which we reproduce may be regarded as a projec- 
tion of a strongly moving current of sound. Re- 
finements of interpretation, as to what visualizes harmony and what melody, will easily occur to the musical 
reader. Often Miss O’Keefe bases her abstractions on plane forms greatly magnified and highly simplified 
in color, and she does effective still life in the new manner. Her most startling innovations have been in for- 
bidden juxtaposition of clashing tones, and in the systematic balance and contrast of complementary colors. 


270 From the painting Music — Blue and Black and Green, 
in the collection of Alfred Stieglitz, New York 


Against the energy and 


RECENT VISIONARIES — THE MODERNISTS 167 


271 From the mural painting Arrival of Saint Julian's Parents in the Villa Razzolini, Florence, Italy 


GARDNER HALE 


To be a Modernist we need not necessarily look forward. If the artist looks resolutely enough backward to 
Congo art or to primitive Christian art his title to Modernism is still clear. Among the abler men who take 
the retrospective view is Gardner Hale, who was born at Chicago in 1894 and was trained under Maurice 
Denis at Paris. Hale has continued the primitivism of his master with a decorative skill and richness of color 
entirely his own. His experiments with the exacting technique of the primitive fresco are said to date 
from his discovery of a very rare fourteenth-century Italian book, which revealed many secrets of Giotto’s 
working methods. 


CHARLES 
SHEELER, JR. 


By elimination of details 
and emphasis of the main 
curves of hulls and bellying 
sails Charles Sheeler pre- 
sents a yacht race in terms 
of geometry. We have to 
do with a moderate type 
of decorative Cubism. 


ingenuity of the design is 
to be set its lack of clarity 
and failure to suggest mo- 
tion. It has the frozen 
quality of all over-intel- 
lectualized art. Sheeler 
was born at Philadelphia 
in 1883 and studied there 
at the Pennsylvania Acad- 
emy, and later in Europe. 
Among the seekers after 


. 272 From the painting Pertaining to Yachts and Yachting in the collection of 
geometrical parallels for Earl Horter, Philadelphia 


appearances he is perhaps the most ingenious. The drawback to the method is a certain obviousness and 
lack of richness. It has, indeed, the defects of all generalization. 


168 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


273 From Thayer's self-portrait in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 


ABBOTT HANDERSON THAYER, 
N.A., S.A.A. 


Because of its recent date and the rugged con- 
centration of the workmanship, this fine portrait 
is properly classified with the current manner 
rather than with that which Thayer deliberately 
forsook. The energy and simplicity of the 
assertion show that Thayer grew to the last, and, 
though he is gone, he may reasonably be reckoned. 
with the younger and more experimental men. 
He had, in particular, their undue horror of habits 
whether bad or good. (See Nos. 140, 159.) 


HOWARD GARDINER CUSHING, 
S.A.A., A.N.A. 


Howarp GARDINER CusHIne (No. 195) too, 
though gone, keeps a kind of modernity through 
his resolute devotion to decorative effect. An 
admirable technician in portraiture and still life, 
with an especial golden iridescence that became 
a mannerism, Cushing is an excellent type of the 
detached, purely esthetic and over-precious 
painter. His pictures are often charming, but a 
sound taste is reluctant to be charmed by them. 


274 From the portrait of Mrs. Cushing in the Museum of 
Fine Arts, Boston 


169 


RECENT VISIONARIES — THE MODERNISTS 


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280 From the painting Reverie in the City Art Museum, St. Louis 


RICHARD EDWARD 
MILLER, N.A. 


Ricuarp E. Mi.uer prac- 
tices a style which is super- 
ficially somewhat akin to 
Frieseke’s, but he regards his 
figures as people and not 
merely as illuminated ob- 
jects and he keeps, with a 
keen curiosity as to lighting, 
something of the warmer 
sympathy of the genre 
painter. Miller was born 
at St. Louis, in 1875. He 
was trained in the St. Louis 
School of Fine Arts, and by 
Constant and Laurens at 
Paris. He paints the fig- 
ure indoors and out with 
a sensitive regard for sub- 
stance and texture, and with 
an intimate sense of the kind 


of room that contains the sitter. Miller, a true modern in his arrogant eclecticism, has been influenced by 
many different schools of the past. From the French Romantics of 1830 he found sanction for his own credo 
that “art’s mission is not literary, the telling of a story, but decorative, the conveying of a pleasant optical 
sensation.” But from the narratives of Prudh’on and David he realized the beauty of excellent draftsman- 
ship; and from a modern German experimenter he learned the secret of working with a substitute for oils. 


CHARLES WEBSTER 
HAWTHORNE, N.A. 


CuarLes W. HAwTHoRNE remains 
true to the counsels of rich painting 
in which he was trained, and owes 
much of his popularity to that 
glamour of fine workmanship with 
which he invests universally felt 
emotions. He repeats in our time 
much that Thomas Hovenden 
(No. 83) inaugurated. Hawthorne 
was born in Maine in 1872. He was 
a pupil of the National Academy 
and Art Students’ League and of 


Chase, whose influence has been ° 


durable in the lusciousness of his 
pupil’s workmanship. Hawthorne 
is a figure painter, finding his best 
subjects among common folk and 
the sturdy fishermen of Cape Cod. 
He paints with a full brush in a rich 
low key, considering not merely the 
lighting and texture of his sitters, 
but also their sentiment. His some- 
what overt idealism is seen at its 
best in the fine picture which is here 
chosen for reproduction. 


281 


From the painting The Trousseau in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


RECENT VISIONARIES— THE MODERNISTS 173 


HELEN MARIA TURNER, N.A. 


Heten M. Turner is primarily a Luminist with 
fine resources of color and handling. With this 
main preoccupation goes an interest in her fellow- 
woman at work, play or rest —a concern that 
makes her art in one aspect a very refined sort of 
genre painting. She was born in Louisville, 
Kentucky, and was a pupil of Cox in the Art 
Students’ League. Her gift is to catch people off 
their guard and to realize very completely the 
spirit of a scene. In such an interior as we repro- 
duce one keeps making discoveries without losing 
the sense of the whole. Her settings have little of 
the formal arrangement of the interior decorator. 
People have lived in them for many years and the 
daily routine of their lives has imprinted itself on 
their rooms, as well as on their bodies and faces. 
With the exception of the late Mary Cassatt (No. 
235), no one of our women painters can be said to 
compare with Helen Turner in the excellence of 
her draftsmanship and composition, in her delicate 
sense of tone and of values, or in general charm of 
treatment. When analyzed this generally recog- 
nized superiority of treatment is found to be 
attributable in a large degree to the unusually 
intimate understanding that seems to illumine and 
unify the themes of practically all of her paintings. 


283 From the painting Signing the Peace Treaty, June 28, 1919, in the National 
Gallery of ew Washington, courtesy of the Arden Gallery, New York 


From the painting On a Rainy Day in the Phillips 


Memorial Gallery, Washington 


JOHN CHRISTEN JOHANSEN, N.A. 


To the objectivity and facility proper to his 
Scandinavian origin John C. Johansen adds 
an alert and engaging decorative sense. 
Born at Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1876, he 
studied at the Chicago Art Institute, with 
Duveneck and at the Julian Academy, Paris, 
becoming a portrait and figure painter of 
graceful and decorative bent. He was one 
of the American artists chosen to paint the 
great figures of the World War; and while 
this picture of the Peace Conference is 
somewhat ambiguous in interest, since the 
great interior competes distractingly with the 
group, it is an intelligent and quite original 
solution of an exceedingly difficult problem. 
It will be profitable to compare it with the 
quite similar picture, by 5. F. B. Morse, 
The Old House of Representatives (No. 54). 
Morse minimized the portraits, letting them 
be discovered casually — an expedient that 
evidently was not open to an official por- 
traitist. 


174 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ADOLPHE BORIE, A.N.A. 


ApoLPHE Boris belongs to that too rare class of 
portraitists that subordinate their own dexterity to 
the expression of the character of the sitter. Thus 
he is in the sound tradition that originated with 
Copley. Borie was born at Philadelphia in 1877. 
He sought his training at the Pennsylvania Academy 
and studied at Munich. He is a portraitist of sober 
excellence, with a keen and sympathetic eye for 
character, and his work has a quality which, for 
relief, contrasts so pleasantly with the superficial 
brilliance of many of the portraits of the schools 
of Paris and Rome. The portraits are free from 
the stridency of the upper register of tones, which 
often verged, in untrained hands, toward hysteria. 
Somehow the Munich-trained artists — Duveneck, 
Ufer, Borie, to take three — have managed by a 
most subtle outwardly projecting curve of their 
lines to obtain in their portraits a fullness and depth 
of form to a degree that is rarely found among 
contemporary draftsmen of other schools. Such 
portraits as that which we reproduce seem so right 
that one is inclined to pass them too quickly. Their 
rightness depends, however, on a careful observa- 
tion and intelligent selection which would repay 
study better than many a more showy canvas. 


Sty 


284 From the portrait in the possession of A. 
Bryn Mawr, Pa. 


E. McVitty, 


WALTER UFER, N.A. 


Tue difficulty in all thoroughgoing Lumi- 
nism in figure painting is to fix the 
balance between the illumination and the 
figure illumined. And sometimes in 
Walter Ufer’s very able studies of 
Indians in the Southwestern desert, I 
wonder whether the theme is a blare of 
sunlight in which there are Indians, or 
Indians in a blare of sunlight. This 
ambiguity does not attach to the present 
picture which effectively makes its illus- 
trative point. Ufer was born in 1876, at 
Louisville, Kentucky, and studied in 
Chicago, Dresden, Munich and Paris. 
He is perhaps the most brilliant ‘and 
forceful of the large group of artists who 
study Indian life at Taos, New Mexico. 
He has been there for fifteen years and is 
still convinced that for the serious painter, 
earnestly making the attempt to portray 
that which is uniquely American, no other 
region is so rich in possibilities. He has 
assimilated the details of its landscape, 
its architecture, and its native life. 


RECENT VISIONARIES— THE MODERNISTS 175 


ROBERT 
SPENCER, N.A. 


Rosert SPENCER has a 
peculiar gift of evoking 
the poetry of old build- 
ings and their inhabi- 
tants, and the poetry 
rests largely on a very 
sensitive selection and 
emphasis of facts. He 
has extraordinary skill 
in making dull colors 
yield luminous effects. 
The present picture 
shows his capacity for 
evoking larger meaning 
from common scenes. 
Everything is singularly 
noble in the twilight. 
Born at Harvard, Ne- 
braska, in 1879, Spencer 
sought as masters Chase, 
Du Mond, Henri and 
Garber. Spencer is an 
extraordinary inter- 
preter of the aspect and spirit of the old towns of Pennsylvania, with an impeccable feeling for composition 
and great richness of color. He is in every way one of the most notable of our younger painters. Spencer 
usually finds his congenial themes in the little towns of the middle Delaware valley in which he lives, at 
New Hope, Pennsylvania. 


ting The Bathers in the possession of the artist 


286 From the pain 


WILLIAM WALLACE 
GILCHRIST, JR. 


Amip the whirling pre- 
occupation with ideas that 
marksthe Modernist 
movement, it is refreshing 
now and then to find a 
painter who retains a solid 
old-fashioned love of 
things. W. W. Gilchrist 
isof thisstamp. He 
paints things with ad- 
miration and joy. Born 
in 1879, Gilchrist studied 
at the Pennsylvania 
Academy and at Paris, 
Munich and London. A 
lover of light, color and 
texture, his refinement in 
expressing them should 
assure him success along 
lines still sound if tempo- 
rarily out of fashion. 


287° From the painting The Model’s Rest in the Cincinnati Museum Association 


176 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


288 From the portrait of Robert Aitken in the possession 
of the artist 


WAYMAN ADAMS, N.A. 


WayMan ADAMS is in every way a contrast 
to the self-critical group we have been con- 
sidering. He is a joyous improviser, catching 
the picturesque aspect of a character and 
investing it readily with whatever light comes 
to hand. The method serves admirably to 
render the volatile and testy genius of a Joseph 
Pennell. For a President Coolidge it might 
be too brisk. He has fairly outdone the speed 
of the speediest of masters in New York. 
Born at Muncie, Indiana, in 1883, Adams 
was a pupil of Chase and Henri. As a portrait 
painter, he seeks complicated effects of 
lighting without sacrificing essential character. 
It is essential that he work rapidly. Satisfied 
that facial expression is the result of the 
interplay of superficial lines, he proceeds quite 
logically to the assertion that those lines are 
never the same at two sittings. The passing 
phases to have unity must be completed at 
one sitting. He cares little for the background, 
or for the composition of the picture as a 
whole. It is recorded that as a student he lined 
the walls of his studio with reproductions 
of portraits which Sargent had painted, so 


289 


SIDNEY EDWARD DICKINSON, A.N.A. 


Many of our younger painters, while avoiding the 
eccentricities of Modernistic painting, have emulated 
its powerful impacts, and have restudied the accepted 
methods of modeling to secure simpler and more 
powerful emphases. Sidney E. Dickinson, Eugene 
Speicher and Leon Kroll have all made this endeavor. 
Of the three, Dickinson is perhaps the most individual 
and genial. In this fine portrait of the sculptor, 
Robert Aitken, apart from the fine modeling, there 
is an engaging blend of elegance with an informal 
monumentality. There is still im a number of his 
portraits, and more ambitious figure compositions, 
evidence of the danger that is inherent in any attempt 
to produce effects in one art by media peculiar to 
another. His forms are sculpturesque. They have 
that strength, and the various units have that pre- 
cision, but the unifying flow from one form to another 
is sometimes missed. Dickinson was born at Wall- 
ingford, Connecticut, in 1890, and was a pupil of 
Bridgman, Volk and Chase. He is a portraitist and 
figure painter who combines the sobriety and elegance 
of the old school with the energy of the new, and 
with a firm grasp of character all his own. 


From the portrait of Joseph Pennell in the Art Institute of Chicago 


that in each upward glance he might absorb subconsciously some phase of the technique of the master. 


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RECENT VISIONARIES— THE MODERNISTS 13%, 


EUGENE SPEICHER, N.A. 


EvGENE SPEICHER as a portraitist has 
worked for what is permanent in char- 
acter, and has given gravity to his work 
by cautiously adopting the fuller and 
simpler rotundities of the Modernists. 
The emphasis is on the larger masses, and 
it brings a certain monumentality into 
themes that are not in themselves monu- 
mental. The present attractive portrait 
shows Speicher midway in experiments 
which he has since carried forward. The 
danger of the method is_ evidently 
monotony. Thus far Speicher’s fine 
sense for individual character has kept 
him free from this. He was born in 
Buffalo, New York, in 1883 and pursued 
his studies in Buffalo, New York and 
Europe. A portraitist of sensitive power, 
his curve is evidently upward. 


LEON KROLL, A.N.A. 


Lron Krouu began as a facile painter in 
the tradition of the academic fine techni- 
cians, but arrested his course in view of 
the simpler and harder vision of the 
Modernists. This has caused a curious 
immobilization of his own art. His recent i 

pictures have emphases rather than 290 From the portrait of A Young Girl in the possession of the artist 
emphasis. Kroll was born at New York in 1884, where he studied in the National Academy school and 
later with Laurens in Paris. Kroll has made his problem that of figure composition in the open air, seeking 
mass through the maximum of pure color without conventional shadows or accents. A searching spirit still 
on the way, his present merit is 
represented by this study of the 
family of his artist friend, the late 
George Bellows. 

Our survey of American painting 
closes at a moment of hesitation and 
apparent confusion which may only 
mean that the art had been over- 
expanded and is now seeking to find 
and keep its own field. One must 
recall that painting, though it has 
very variously represented our civi- 
lization, has no more been the 
representative art in America than 
it has in other lands. Indeed, it 
must be doubted if any of the arts, 
even that which seems most repre- 
sentative, namely literature, has 
fully caught the step of a civilization 
that has not definitely reached the 
stage of esthetic self-consciousness 
either as regards its idealisms or its 
urgent practical activities. 


pe 


291 From the painting In the Country in the Detroit Institute of Arts 


CHAPTER XVII 
EARLY AMERICAN SCULPTURE 


IE tardy appearance of sculpture in this country is indicated by a few significant 
dates: 1805, the year of the birth of Horatio Greenough, whom Lorado Taft 


66 


calls “our first professional sculptor’; 1833 and 1847, the years in which Ball 
Hughes’ Hamilton and Dr. Bowditch were executed, said to be respectively the first 
marble and bronze statues done on this side of the water; and 1853, when Clark Mills 
unveiled to a marveling Congress his astounding General Jackson, our first equestrian 
monument. 

The reasons for this lateness have been sought in the primitive character of colonial 
culture, in the materialism forced upon an infant society by daily battle with the prob- 
lem of existence, or in the Puritanism of New England, which set its mark upon our early 
civilization as a whole. But these conditions affected American art in all its branches, 
and yet had not prevented the development of a vigorous school of painting in the eight- 
eenth century. Sculpture, on the other hand, was simply not wanted; and Trumbull 
had all the appearances with him when he remarked to the New Jersey marble cutter 
Frazee in 1820 that “nothing in sculpture would be wanted in this country for yet a 
hundred years.” 

Viewed as a phenomenon of the general history of art, the slow growth of sculpture 
in America is rather to be attributed to the simple fact that our origins are English. 
The inability of the Anglo-Saxon race to express itself in plastic form has been frequently 
noted. From the early Middle Ages artists in England have been masters of line, but 
curiously powerless to do aught but draw in sculpture, and the craftsmen who carved 
the lean saints of the English cathedrals transmitted to modern Englishmen the same 
insensitiveness to the beauty and significance of surface. Theirs is a genius which deline- 
ates but does not fashion. } 

The absence of a sense of form in the English temperament that shaped our own must 
have had much to do with the persistent indifference to sculpture in early America. 
The same failing has had more far-reaching influence in our sculpture itself, for through- 
out the New England school from Powers and Greenough down to Bela Pratt we find 
the same insensitiveness to mass, the same stamping or incising on the material of the 
features that the material should thrust out itself. It has its moral counterpart in New 
England’s distrust of sensuous beauty, and gives the sculptural style of the school an 
air of restraint, an over-refinement that leaves Powers’ and Greenough’s figures meager, 
approaches the genteel too closely in the early work of French, and only in Warner 
becomes a beautiful economy. 

One would suppose that foreign training might have counteracted this native trend; 


but at the time our sculpture began to appear, the prevailing style in Europe, and the . 
178 


EARLY AMERICAN SCULPTURE 179 


artistic education which our young sculptors got, was of a sort rather to encourage it. 
For when Greenough sailed for Italy in 1825 he initiated the practice of study in Rome 
and Florence which was followed by most of our sculptors until the ’seventies and made 
them exponents of the Italian neo-classic manner. 

The neo-classic is better understood as a reaction, than as a real revival of Hellenic 
principles. Its smooth surfaces and cold outlines, its decentralized compositions and 
stony properties, were meant to reprove the libertine elegance and naturalism of the 
French rococo that had charmed the eighteenth century. The deadening influence of 
this artificial classic style was only temporary in Europe, which soon returned to new 
applications of rococo rhythm, or of the sweep and unity provided by the baroque which 
had preceded it. But America had known neither rococo nor baroque, so her sculptors 
remained faithful to the pseudo-classic rules they learned in Italy long after Italy had 
ceased elsewhere to be influential. Some of them still lived at Rome or Florence, export- 
ing their wares to this country, even after the majority of their fellows had turned defin- 
itely to Paris for instruction. Moses Ezekiel, who died in 1917, was one of the last of 
the old expatriate Italian school. 

Our best-known sculptors, then, of the pre-Parisian period — Greenough, Powers, 
_ Crawford, Randolph Rogers, Harriet Hosmer, Story, Rinehart — did most of their work 
in Italy, and found in the refinement of Canova’s and Thorwaldsen’s style a congenial 
schooling for the New England prepossessions which have been mentioned above. The 
classic busts and statues of our statesmen which they shipped home conformed to the 
Ciceronian vocabulary traditional in our patriotic themes, and their “ideal” works 
had the anemic sentiment peculiar to the American dilution of Victorian culture. Their 
nudities made trouble; Greenough’s Chanting Cherubs raised violent protests in the 
name of decency, and Powers’ Greek Slave was allowed to be exhibited at Cincinnati 
only after a committee of clergymen had visited her and given her a moral character. 
In general, however, their works were highly prized — in England as well as here — 
because they were refined, and because they were foreign. They belong to the period 
when the United States was still a cultural colony of Europe. 

There were other sculptors in our country, on the other hand, who did not go to 
Italy, or, doing so, did not become Italianate. It is through the works of such men that 
the vital growth of our sculptural style can be traced; from a modest wood carver like 
Rush and marble cutters like Frazee, to the dynamic realism of John Quincy Adams 
Ward. The beginnings of this native strain show the untutored approach to nature 
which marks the primitive stage of every sculptural style; its characteristic theme is 
the portrait, and in this at first the creative effort is exhausted by mere reproduction. 
But it initiated our realism, and gave to it that strong sense of fact that makes Ameri- 
can sculpture unique in modern art. Even at the present sophisticated day, our sculptors 
who are truly American are realists at heart, working with difficulty toward their general- 
izations, while the opposite is the case in Europe, whose long stylistic tradition first 
prompts the artist to think of beauty of form and unity of composition, after which he 
may, or may not, achieve a concrete note. 

Rush, Frazee and Augur of Connecticut were the pioneers of this pursuit of fact. Later 
artists of like bent were Clevenger, author of a series of faithful busts, and Joel Hart 


180 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


of Kentucky who did the odd Henry Clay at Richmond, with its truthful head set like 
an acroterion on an unstable manikin which is loosely hung with clothes. H. K. Brown is 
an intermediate figure, a student for four years in Italy, but out of sympathy with neo- 
classic fashion, even though his undistinguished portraits did not much raise the plane 
of realism. More important is Ball, who managed to mingle native feeling and Italian 
allegory with a frequently lofty effect, and always with dignity. Both he and Brown 
had famous pupils: French worked for a year in Ball’s studio at F lorence, and in Brown’s 
was learned that mastery of sculptural processes which underlies the art of Ward. 

Erastus D. Palmer was a far more significant figure than Ball in that he achieved a 
pure and lyric style out of his American environment, with no borrowing of neo-classic 
phrases. This country carpenter of New York trained himself as sculptor through an 
arduous evolution from cameo cutting, by way of relief, to sculpture in the round. His 
White Captive (1858) is the first example in our sculpture of native poetry unschooled 
by Europe. His Peace in Bondage — a relief of a female figure, half draped, and tied to 
a tree! — is naive but wholly sincere in its reaction to the gloomy outlook of 1863; its 
sharp, lovely contours and directness show the maturity of Palmer’s own art, but are 
no less the accents of youthful promise in our native style. 

An evolution of style similar to that of Palmer in its wholly American schooling, but 
quite different in its issue, is found in the work of John Quincey Adams Ward, who carried 
the native realism to the highest point it could reach without the resources of French 
technique. Caffin, in his American Masters of Sculpture, has traced the gradual change 
in Ward’s statues from the Lafayette ot Burlington, Vermont, through the Washington 
which stands on the steps of the Subtreasury in New York, to the seated Horace Greeley 
in City Hall Park. The three figures epitomize the growth of American realistic por- 
traiture from a preoccupation with clothes and physiognomy to a sense of form 
beneath them, and thence to the character which the form connotes. It was not in 
Ward’s art to go farther and reach Saint-Gaudens’ poetic rendering of the ideal signifi- 
cance of character, or attain to Grafly’s palpitating life. His was a record of arresting 
fact, whose mere accumulation gives a forcible finality to his works. His prolonged 
practice as a sculptor (he died in 1910), and the revered position he held so long in the 
midst of a younger generation trained in Paris, made him a factor of no small importance 
in the domestication of the new French technique. 

The importance of Ward in the evolution of American sculpture is summed up in this — 
that he permanently established in plastic tradition our native sense of fact — and made 
thereof a virtue. The other side of national character, that incurable and incurious 
faith in high but ill-defined ideals, was left by our sculpture previous to the ’eighties to 
the anzemic medium of the Italian neo-classic style. Only Rinehart perhaps, among the 
expatriate Americans who sent their products back from studios in Rome and Florence, 
grasped in some measure the freshness and native force of this idealism. There was as 
yet no French to express it in the popular feminine mode that prevails in our country 
to-day, nor a Barnard to convey it with elemental masculinity. There was above all 
no Saint-Gaudens to reconcile these two antipodal qualities of America and to combine 
fact and poetry in a union of strength and beauty. 


EARLY AMERICAN SCULPTURE 181 


WILLIAM RUSH 


Wiiu1am Rusu, our pioneer sculptor, was the 
founder and first president of the Pennsylvania 
Academy. He was born in Philadelphia, in 1756, 
and died there in 1833. The Nymph was origi- 
nally in wood, Rush’s customary medium, in which 
he acquired proficiency by practice in carving 
figureheads for ships. ‘The figure’s lack of style 
reflects the initial efforts of our sculpture; its 
posture, half-smile and slippery surface echo 
quaintly the rococo manner of eighteenth-century 
Europe. The painter, Thomas Eakins, has 
charmingly imagined (No. 84) the demure sur- 
roundings in which Rush conducted his great 
adventure of carving from the nude model. 
Rush was followed by the Italianate sculptors. 


292 Bronze replica of Rush’s Nymph of the Schuylkill in 
Fairmount Park, Philadelphia 


HIRAM POWERS, N.A. (hon.) 


Or these the most influential perhaps was Hiram Powers, 
the first American sculptor to win fame and popularity. 
He was born at Woodstock, Vermont, in 1805 and died in 
Florence in 1873. The vogue of Powers in England and 
this country was due less to his excellence as a sculptor 
than to sympathy felt for the cause of Greek independence, 
which this statue, his best-known work, was calculated 
to excite. Powers intensified the neo-classic coldness of 
his models with his own New England restraint. He also 
gained standing with the knowing as an exponent of the 
nude in art. This perilous distinction he shared with such 
painters as Vanderlyn (No. 28) and Durand (No. 42). In- 
cisive in male portraits, he made his females more ideally 
good than beautiful. Hawthorne has left a delightful pic- 


293 Powers’ Greek Slave, marble, in the Corcoran i i ; 
aliens oF Ath, Washington ture of the garrulous Powers in his Italian Notes. 


182 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA s 


HORATIO GREENOUGH, N.A. (hon.) 


‘TRAINED under Thorwaldsen and Barto- 
lini, and resident of Italy until a year 
before his death, Horatio Greenough is 
again a thorough neo-classicist, with 
reactions wholly intellectual, as shown 
by the meagerness of his forms and his 
ultra-literary content. He was born in 
Boston in 1805 and died at Somerville, 
Massachusetts, in 1852. The friend and 
follower of Emerson, his reactions were ; 
intellectual rather than artistic. The 


Olympian Washington, which is his only = 
statue that still seems to count, accords 
with neo-classic mythology in portraiture. ‘ 
Its bad anatomy and grandiloquence are 
only saved from absurdity by the de- } 
voted patriotism, which these works of @ 
our epic period commonly show. ; 

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294  Greenough’s Washington, marble, in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington 


THOMAS CRAWFORD, N.A. (hon.) 


WE reach a somewhat more original art in Thomas Crawford, 
who was born in New York City in 1814 and died at London in 
1857. Author of the pediment sculpture of the Senate wing of 
the Capitol, Crawford produced in his short life numerous portraits 
and monuments, mostly illustrative of early American history. 
He has the high aspirations and inadequate technique of our early 
masters; passages of lofty sentiment contrast with most prosaic 
detail. In the Freedom his usually obtrusive properties give 
interest and mass to the distant figure. At least he had moved 
slightly from the cosmopolitan insipidity of his contemporaries, 
and had inaugurated, if inadequately, a genuinely American vein. 


295 Crawford’s colossal bronze figure Freedom 
on the dome of the Capitol, Washington 


HENRY KIRKE BROWN, 
N.A. 


Tuts slight promise moves 
toward fulfillment in the sculp- 
ture of Henry K. Brown. It 
shows a certain respect for 
facts and a new energy. Brown 
was born at Leyden, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1814 and died at 
Newburgh, New York, in 1886. 
In spite of four years in Italy, 
he belongs less to the neo- 
classic wing of our schools than 
tothenativerealists. His puffy 
modeling fills the carefully 
delineated clothes of his por- 
trait statues without making 
them significant. The monu- 
ment here illustrated is by far 
his best work. Having dig- 
nity and strength, it perhaps 
owes its primacy among our 
equestrian Washingtons to the 
collaboration of his gifted pupil, 
J. Q. A. Ward. It is the first 
patriotic monument that 
deeply caught the popular 
imagination and is a harbinger 


_of better things. 


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296 Brown's equestrian statue Washingto 


297 Mills’ equestrian statue General Jackson, bronze, in Lafayette Square, Washington 


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EARLY AMERICAN SCULPTURE 


183 


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n, bronze, in Union Square, N 


ew York 


CLARK MILLS 


THE way to better sculpture was, 
however, far from easy and straight. 
In the work of Clark Mills, popular 
enough in his day, we find a distinct 
retrogression from the not very high 
standard of Brown. Mills was born 
in the state of New York in 1815 and 
died at Washington in 1883. He 
has at least the distinction of creating 
both our first and worst equestrian 
monument (1853). The tour de force 
of balancing the defender of New 
Orleans so gallantly upon his rearing 
steed absorbed the craftsman’s small 
creative ability; Mills was a caster 
rather than a modeler, giving the 
same metallic texture to Jackson’s 
head, the horse’s hide, and the 
holsters, hat and straps. Congress 
added twenty thousand dollars to 
the contracted price of twelve thou- 
sand for this statue. 


184 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ERASTUS DOW PALMER, N.S.S. (hon.), 
N.A. (hon.) 

In the sculpture of E. D. Palmer, who was born in 
Onondaga County, New York, in 1817 and died at 
Albany in 1904, we find the first sure vision of a native 
style. Baptized with a romantic title of the period 
(1858), this charming record of girlhood is the first ex- 
ample of an American mood, controlling with a lyric 
realism the prevalent Italian manner. Palmer was 
a carpenter who trained himself as a cameo cutter 
and sculptor. In relief his finest work is Peace in 
Bondage (1863), the single piece of plastic poetry 
which the Civil War produced. He was a man of 
personal dignity and a useful influence upon such 
American painters as Homer D. Martin and others 
of the Albany group. The reticent beauty of this 
figure lives again in Warner’s Diana (No. 308) and 
Rudulph Evans’ Golden Hour (No. 359). 


awe 


298 Palmer’s White Captive, marble, in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York 


WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 


Wirn Story we take leave of our early neo-classic 
school. He was its latest and most illustrious em- 
bodiment — the beau ideal of a superior expatriated 
person and a mediocre artist. Born at Salem, Mass- 
achusetts, in 1819 he died at Vallombrosa, Italy, 
in 1895. Story was the son of the famous jurist of 
that name, a Harvard graduate, and the author of 
two volumes of verse. Such intellectual preposses- 
sions and the training received at Rome explain his 
arid style, and the enthusiasm which it evoked 
from Hawthorne. This portrait of Peabody is one 
of the last of the early American sort, in which 
well-characterized heads are set upon meticulously 
inanimate clothes. The future was to be with 
sculptors independent enough to use the academic 
formulas with individual intelligence. 299 Story’s George Peabody, bronze, at Baltimore, Md. 


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EARLY AMERICAN SCULPTURE 185 


THOMAS BALL, N.S.S. (hon.) 


OF this sort was Thomas Ball who was born at 
Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1819 and died 
at Montclair, New Jersey, in 1911. A self- 
educated sculptor, who settled in Italy only in 
middle life, Ball illustrates with Palmer and 
Ward the gradual extrication of our sculpture 
from neo-classic prepossessions. In the eques- 
trian Washington in Boston, mere similitude 
exhausts the creative impulse of this pioneer. 
In the Emancipation Group metallic modeling 
and sincere, but allegorical approach to the 
patriotic theme link him with the primitives; 
modern is the dignity and unity of his composi- 
tional silhouette. 


301 Rinehart’s Rebecca, marble, in the possession of 
Edwin D. Morgan, Westbury, Long Island 


300 Ball’s Emancipation Group, bronze, at Washington 


WILLIAM HENRY RINEHART 


Turis more personal quality appears in the younger 
members of the neo-classic school, among the most im- 
portant of which is William H. Rinehart. He was born in 
Carroll County, Maryland, in 1825 and died at Rome, 
Italy, in 1874. The best of our neo-classic sculptors, 
Rinehart like them made his career in Italy, but his early 
life was passed in Baltimore, where the Peabody Institute 
has assembled the casts of a large portion of his work. 
He lived late enough in the century to color his classicism 
with romantic feeling, and to this his sensitive tempera- 
ment gave a sincerity usually lacking in the abstract 
creations of the school. The delicate dignity of the 
drapery on the right lower leg of the Rebecca exhibits 
Rinehart’s unerring taste in line and contour. 


186 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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302 Rogers’ bronze doors History of Columbus, on the Capitol, Washington 


RANDOLPH ROGERS 


Between the neo-classical and naturalistic schools we find certain transitional sculptors. Randolph Rogers 
may serve as the type, though he too lived most of his life in Rome. Born at Waterloo, New York, in 1825, 
he died there in 1892. Rogers is best known for his marble Nydia the Blind Girl of Pompewi and for the Lost 
Pleiad, which show a modicum of expressive movement, reflecting the halting naturalism of his master, Bar- 
tolini. The “Columbus-doors” of the Capitol owe their ensemble to Ghiberti’s portal at Florence; the per- 
spectives are well handled, but the episodes have a merely narrative force and no decorative value. Rogers 
lacks Crawford’s unsophisticated freshness, but shows a fuller appropriation of Italian technique. 


EARLY AMERICAN SCULPTURE 


JOHN ROGERS, N.S.S., N.A. 


Unti recently it has been the habit to scorn the little 
plaster groups of John Rogers, as so much outworn 
Latterly it 
has been seen that it was no mean achievement to popu- 


paraphernalia of a most unezsthetic time. 


larize sculpture of an American and realistic cast; and 
that the groups have a modest merit on their own 


account. John Rogers was born at Salem, Massachu- 
setts, in 1829. He died at New Canaan, Connecticut, 
in 1904. A master mechanic modeling in hours of 


leisure, Rogers was thirty years old before he began to 
make his famous “groups.” 
valuable record of American life — and taste — in the 
*sixties, but hold their own by virtue of an idyllic 
quality that clings to them in spite of the conscientious 
efforts of their author to make them merely real. 


These are not merely a 


Harriet Hosmer's Zenobia, marble, photograph by 
courtesy of Miss Harriet Hosmer Carr, Cambridge, Mass. 


XII—13 


304 


187 


303 Rogers’ Union Refugees, plaster, courtesy of the estate of 
John Rogers, New Canaan, Conn. 


HARRIET GOODHUE HOSMER 


Nor so much can be said for Rinehart’s colleague 
at Rome, Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, but her con- 
temporary repute forbids her omission in any 
historical survey. She was born at Watertown, 
Massachusetts, in 1830 and died there in 1908. 
The best known, until recent years, of our woman- 
sculptors, Harriet G. Hosmer followed the classic 
revival at Rome under the Englishman Gibson. 
Her work closely resembles Story’s, as Italian in 
technique, and in what content it evinces. Haw- 
thorne saw in Rome the unfinished model of the 
Zenobia which is here reproduced, and was moved 
by it to enthusiastic admiration, as indeed he was 
by most of the efforts of the neo-classic expatriates. 
The Italian quality of this phase of our sculpture is 
evident in the insensitive modeling which forced 
shadows will the undifferentiated 
detail, and the superficial sentiment. Personally 
Harriet Hosmer was a brilliant woman, an intimate 
of the Brownings and a favorite in the best circles 
of cosmopolitan Rome. 


not soften, 


188 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD, 
N.S.S. (first president, afterward 
honorary president); N.A., P.N.A., 
N.LA.L. 


Tue latent American inclination for 
realism comes into the open in the 
sculpture of J. Q. A. Ward. Born at 
Urbana, Ohio, in 1830, Ward died full of 
honors in New York City in 1910. 
Ward’s sculpture is the final flowering of 
the realist strain, whose entire evolution 
can be traced in his own work, from en- 
tanglement with detail to a more selective 
sense of form and thence to intense study 
of character. A pupil of H. K. Brown, 
and with no European training, he makes 
a virtue of the national sense of fact, 
and is the greatest of our home-trained 
sculptors. Ward was the first president 
and afterward honorary president of the 
N.S.S. His Beecher is full of strength 
and vigor, a brilliant representation of the 
great divine who fought the evil of slavery 
and who during the Civil War attempted 
to explain the North to the English 
people. 


305 Ward’s.Henry Ward Beecher, bronze, in Borough Hall Park, Brooklyn 


WARD’S STURDY REALISM 


Tuer cumulative effect of faithful minutize imparts tre- 
mendous force to the Beecher, whose dauntless pudgy 
figure is actually on the platform, facing a hostile 
English audience to deliver Lincoln’s appeal for English 
support. The sculptor’s instinctive realism emerges in 
the casual disposition of the negro woman and of the 
children which relieve without decorating the base of 
the statue; distrustful of allegory, he ignores the 
pedestal. Ward’s long career traverses our art; the 
early Indian Hunter of Central Park has still a bit of 
Cooper in it; in the Garfield his capitulation to French 
fashion shows the power of foreign ideas in his later 
work. Following here a European type of monument, 
he has weakened the portraiture, although his sturdy 
realism is still able to evoke unusually dynamic symbols 
in the three figures of the base (Warrior, Statesman, 
Scholar). 


ee " : 
306 Ward's Garfield Monument, bronze, Washington 


ote 


CHAPTER XVIII 
SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 


r NHE turning of our foreign-bound students from Italy to France began about 


1870. A new idealism was abroad in America, consequent on the national 

consciousness aroused by the Civil War; the tenets of American faith had 
acquired vital significance by virtue of the blood spilled to defend them. This new spirit 
found only coldness in the sonorous abstractions of the neo-classic, and it was to be 
expected that our students should be attracted by the renewed authority of French 
style, which is always human in its elegance. Lorado Taft counts at least three of our 
young sculptors enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts before the Franco-Prussian War — 
Roberts, Warner and Saint-Gaudens. Two of them exhibited at the Exposition of 1876; 
Roberts, a study of a model called La premiére Pose, and Warner, a medallion of Edwin 
Forrest. 

Roberts’ figure, not great in itself, caused comment at the Exposition because of its 
superiority of technique. Indeed, the French works at the Exposition of 1876 by our 
own or French sculptors, while not numerous nor representing the best that Paris could 
teach, made so great an impression on our sculpture that its contemporary period is 
ordinarily dated from the Centennial. French sculpture ever since the eighteenth cen- 
tury has had a clay technique whose final medium was preferably bronze or terra cotta. ' 
These call for more vital anatomy than do the Italian marbles, a more emphatic play of 
light and shade, and the broader treatment which keeps the details and drapery out of 
focus. In the hands of the Frenchmen who taught our sculptors — Carpeaux, Jouffroy, 
Falguiére, Mercié — this method reached a brilliance that might have become an end 
in itself with the generality of their American pupils (as it did become with some), had 
it not been for the realist strain represented by Ward, and had not the first generation 
of Paris-trained Americans included two men, Warner and Saint-Gaudens, who power- 
fully turned the skill they learned in France to their own native purposes. 

The New England genius reached its finest embodiment in Warner’s art; its next 
best in French’s recent work. The sense of form and surface, lacking in the early New 
England sculptors, and in her lesser sculptors now, was doubtless absorbed by Warner 
in France, but it was his native temperament that held it to the very mean of loveliness. 
French has acquired it slowly, less completely, and apparently indirectly from his Paris- 
trained confréres. In both one finds the New England extremity of refinement, austere 
in Warner, urbane in French. 

Warner’s classic spirit, absorbed in beauty, and productive of a bare dozen major 
works, was hardly conscious of the change that had come over the spirit of his country 
since the Civil War. Quite different was the case with Saint-Gaudens, on whom the 


sight of Lincoln, driving through the New York streets in the sculptor’s boyhood, had 
189 


190 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


made a profound impression. The artist in him felt, if he did not clearly see, the dualism 
of American life, consisting of a broad and vague idealism — a latter-day dilution of the 
New England point of view, and the more obvious other half of Americanism — our 
practical sense of fact. The discrepancy between these two thoroughly native traits 
explains the contradictions that make us difficult to foreign understanding; it is the cause 
as well of the abrupt reversals of public opinion in our politics, and of the contrast be- 
tween our materialism and ready response to sentimental appeal. These traits seem 
poles apart; Saint-Gaudens seized the best in both, and united them in a rugged but 
poetic harmony. French-trained, he outstripped his Parisian masters in sculptural 
resources, enriching our school with a new standard of low relief, and new architectural 
accent in sculptured monuments; he invented also a new use of inscriptions that gave 
them part in the design, and artistic as well as literary eloquence. He could be both 
expressive and monumental at once, as no Frenchman was since Rude, and Rude he sur- 
passed in poetic power. There is no commemorative monument in Europe that tells 
its story with such poignant force as the Sherman, and no single figure embodies the 
modern tragedy so tersely, and so completely, as the Peace of God. Saint-Gaudens not 
only led our school, but belongs among the great masters of his art. 

The difficulties of his syntheses have been as a rule too much for our lesser men. The 
merit of some of them lies in conscientious effort to do in their own ways what he did, 
and to combine our indispensable fact with ideal expression. ‘The effort leaves its mark 
upon their styles, as, for example, in the high key of Bartlett’s figures, and Barnard’s 
labored, colossal vagueness. Others have sought the union in pure symbolism, like 
Grafly when he strayed from portraiture, or, like MacNeil, have given us no more than 
in the French sense; no 
American ever composed a monumental group in rhythmic unity, or became a virtuoso 


be) 


finely rendered fact. In all there is a certain lack of “style 


in architectural decoration. 

These, however, are the defects of our qualities. European “style’’ means that 
swift formal synthesis which the academic French and Italians inherit from the rococo 
and baroque traditions, whose unifying and decorative factor is movement in surface 
or silhouette. This will integrate a group, or beautify a building, but it will never express 
anything but itself. Its inadequacy as a medium for modern ideas and feelings opened 
the way for Rodin’s successful revolt against the Academy, and explains the seriousness 
with which his later eccentricities were taken; being the extreme of the undecorative, 
they were therefore considered and prized as the extreme of the expressive. If the need 
of expression in sculpture was thus felt in Europe, it was a far greater obsession to the 
American; the themes of Europe have had the generations of repetition, variation and 
enlargement, but how much there is in America that is still unsung in sculpture! In 
Europe a dearth of fresh content leaves sculpture periodically with only formal beauty 
as its theme; in our country there is still too much to be said to impose upon its sculpture 
the limited vocabulary of stylistic perfection. Lack of “‘style’’ may divest our sculpture 
of rhythm, particularly in its monumental efforts, and may give a prevailing angularity 
to its compositions, but it also reflects a firm root in reality, and a desire to express rather 
than to decorate, that are qualities of healthy growth. 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 191 


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307 Warner’s bronze doors on the Library of Congress, Washington 


OLIN LEVI WARNER, N.A., S.A.A. 


Lucuprry of outlook made Warner the first and one of the best of our decorative sculptors. He appears as 
such in the bronze doors for the Library of Congress. The group in the lunette represents “Tradition”’; 
the two figures in the lower panels are “Imagination” and “Memory.” Warner’s sense of fitness emerges 
beautifully in this pair, whose pose and gesture are controlled by an exquisite economy. The decorative 
scheme of the whole portal is reduced, characteristically, to its simplest solution. 


192 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


308 Warner’s Diana, marble, in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York 


WARNER’S DIANA 


TuroucH the 1870’s the more intelligent painters and 


sculptors turned to Paris for instruction and inspiration, 
with the advantage of an improvement in technique and the 
disadvantage of subjection to alien ideals. At this moment 
of transition only a few artists managed to shape a personal 
course. Among this élite Olin Warner has a distinguished 
place. He was born in West Suffield, Connecticut, in 1844 
and died in New York City in 1896. Among the first of 
our sculptors to turn from Italy to Paris for training, 
Warner studied under Jouffroy and Carpeaux. In Paris no 
doubt he learned his delicate modeling, but the often su- 
perficial brio of the French is replaced in Warner by a fine 
austerity. He has been called the most “Greek” of our 
sculptors, for his objective handling, and his elimination of 
the unessential. 


AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS, N.5S.S., N.A., S.A.A., 


N.1.A.L., many honorary foreign memberships 


To an intelligent foreigner American sculpture would be 
summed up in a single name, that of Augustus Saint- 
Gaudens. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1848 and 


died at Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1907. Saint-Gaudens is unquestionably the greatest of our sculptors, and 
indeed in many ways the most outstanding figure in American art. His father was a French shoemaker of 
southern France, who made his way to Dublin and there married an Irish girl. Augustus, the third child, 
was only an infant when the family emigrated to New York. He was apprenticed, at the age of thirteen, 
in cameo cutting for six disagreeable years, during which he learned the nicety of scale which makes his 


low relief so monumental. 


309 Bronze Tablet by Saint-Gaudens in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland 


oe 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 193 


310 Saint-Gaudens’ Farragut Monument, bronze and marble, in Madison Square, New York 


SAINT-GAUDENS’ FARRAGUT . 


Arter study at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design, Saint-Gaudens went to Paris in 1867, 
entering Jouffroy’s studio at the Beaux-Arts. Returning in 1875, he won his spurs with the Farragut Monu- 
ment (1881), the product of a fortunate collaboration with the architect, Stanford White, and a model there- 
after, in its happy union of sculpture and architecture, for both European and American monuments. Other 
features of this work are still imitated in contemporary sculpture, the fluttering skirt of the Admiral’s coat, 
for example, suggesting the environment which Saint-Gaudens’ figures never lack, and the use of the inscrip- 
tion for both decorative and expressive force. 


HIS GENERAL SHERMAN 


Tue equestrian figure of Sherman 
(1903) is the sculptor’s most finished 
work in that technical mastery which 
has here brought his peculiar purposes 
to fruition: his pictorial effect which 
is nevertheless not picturesque; his 
poignant mingling of poetry and fact; 
the diminution of mass by which he 
underlines detail without excess of 
weight. Distaste for gesture makes of 
the General an immobile apex to the 
ensemble; Sherman’s fiery purpose is 
inherent rather in the flying cloak and 
spirited steed. It is an art of intima- 
tion and of accents which are as re- 
fined as they are telling. The reality 
of the hero is idealized, while the lean 
and ardent Victory walks firmly on 


311 Sameas cea Shamik Monument, bestise: at Fifth Avenue and Fifty- 
the earth. ninth Street, New York, courtesy of the City of New York Art Commission 


194 


312 


Saint-Gaudens’ Abraham Lincoin, bronze, 
in Lincoln Park, Chicago 


AMOR CARITAS 


SaInTt-GAUDENS art moves between an idealized 
realism and an idealism which is always lucid and 
specific. The Amor Caritas represents the latter 
phase of his genius. This relief, one of the few 
American sculptures to be included in the Luxem- 
bourg Gallery of French masterpieces, was originally 
one of the three angels at the foot of the Cross in 
the Morgan monument at Hartford, Connecticut, 
destroyed by fire before completion. The same head, 
without the grave sweetness imparted by the Ameri- 
can, appears in the Gloria Victis of his French 
fellow-pupil, Mercié; we find it again in the Victory 
of the Shaw relief at Boston. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


SAINT-GAUDENS’ LINCOLN 


Ir was inevitable that Saint-Gaudens should do a 
Lincoln. From the life mask model by Volk, he ere- 
ated a portrait of the Great Liberator that has be- 
come as standard as Stuart’s Washington. The 
strength of its grip upon Americans had no small 
part in the revolt against Barnard’s realistic render- 
ing and will doubtless withstand the competition of 
French’s colossal figure at Washington. The sculp- 
tor has here advanced from the realism of the 
Farragut (itself far distant from the emphatic fact 
of Ward’s Beecher). The chair and pose give the 
figure environment; the garments are out of focus 
save for a few telling details. The homely face and 
figure become thus an ideal of irresistible ap- 
peal; no one, as Dio Chrysostom said of Phidias’ 
Zeus, “having seen it, will conceive him otherwise 
thereafter.” 


313 


Saint-Gaudens’ Amor Caritas, bronze, in the Luxembourg 
Gallery, Paris 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 195 


THE PEACE OF GOD 


TueE title The Peace of God was given 
by Henry Adams to the statue which 
is shown here; the commoner name 
“Grief” shows by its disparity the 
figure’s power of suggestion. It is a 
fairly early work (1891), and yet com- 
monly admitted to be the greatest that 
American sculpture has produced. Out 
of the indeterminate ensemble provided 
by the stark simplicity of the setting, 
the broad symbolic drapery, and the 
sexless figure, come stabs of characteriza- 
tion — the single visible arm, and the 
listless fold between the knees that pro- 
duces the effect of spiritual exhaustion. 
It is asufficient commentary on the power 
of this sculptor for effective concentra- 
tion, to remark that the observer never 
misses the absence of the other arm, 
or rather its bare indication by the left 
hand which supports the elbow. The 
virility of Saint-Gaudens’ art may be 
gauged by comparing this figure with the 
similarly veiled but much more urbane 


Death of French’s group (No. 316) 


314 Saint-Gaudens’ The Peace of God, bronze, on the tomb of Mrs. Henry Adams, 
Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington 


DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH, N.S.S. (hono- 
rary president), N.A., S.A.A., N.LA.L., 
A.A.A.L. 


Wuite Saint-Gaudens is incontestably the 
greatest American sculptor, Daniel Chester French 
may be regarded as the typical American sculptor, 
or at least the typical New England sculptor of 
our times. He was born at Exeter, New Hamp- 
shire, in 1850. The Minute Man was completed at 
twenty-three, with no model but a cast of the 
Apollo Belvedere. French’s previous work in- 
cluded a number of small plaster groups, and the 
mark of the genre is still with this conception, 
as well as the neo-classic survival of carefully 
rendered properties. The immediate popularity 
of the figure has been generally the fortune of this 
sculptor’s works. This is due in part to the 
absence of foreign traits save such as his later 
works have acquired from French-trained Ameri- 
can confréres. He is in fact almost entirely 
an American product, having studied under 
Rimmer in Boston and Ward in New York, with 
only a year under Ball in Florence. His figures 
squarely conform with average American taste 
in the consistently feminine mode in which their 
pleasant idealism is cast. 


315 French's Minute Man, bronze, at Concord, Mass, 


196 


317 


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316 French’s Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor, bronze, in Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston 


French's Spirit of Life, bronze, on the Trask Memorial, 
Saratoga Springs, N. Y. 


FRENCH’S ALLEGORY OF DEATH 


Frencu’s best loved work is Death and the 
Sculptor, an allegory for the tomb of Martin 
Milmore, a sculptor who died at the age of thirty- 
eight. This work was executed about the time 
of Saint-Gaudens’ Peace of God, the influence of 
whose veiled mystery may be seen in the Angel 
of Death who, stays the sculptor’s hand. French 
here succeeds in sounding a deeper note than 
usual in his first period, perhaps because for once 
he has masked the incorrigible urbanity of his 
heads. 


HIS SPIRIT OF LIFE 


Frencu is American-trained, save for a year with 
Ball at Florence. Because thus freed from foreign 
mannerism, his works make a universal appeal to 
our public, and also because they are couched in 
the feminine mode that prevails in this country 
for ideal expression. His recent work has lost 
the early suspicion of genre and acquired a broad 
authority and grander rhythm that justify the 
leading place accorded him. His colossal Lincoln 
for the Memorial Building at Washington (Vol. 
XIII, No. 556) solves with reasonable success 
about the most difficult problem that a modern 
sculptor could set himself — a benign colossus — 
in a frock coat. 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 


JOHN J. BOYLE, N.S.S., Soc. Artistes francais 


From now on our prospect is very varied, since we have 
to do with endeavors to assimilate French training to per- 
sonal idiosyncracy and American conditions of patronage. 
For a certain incoherence in the spectacle, there is com- 
pensation in a generally good level of craftsmanship. 
Among these individuals let us begin with the gifted 
Trish-American John J. Boyle. Born in New York City 
in 1852, he died there in 1917. His training was at the 
Pennsylvania Academy, and under Dumont and Thomas 
and E. Millet in Paris. A sculptor of uneven ac- 
cent — witness the absurd bear cub (described by Lorado 
Taft as “very dead”) —he is nevertheless one of 
undeniable force, which he owes to his native and un- 
compromising approach to his subject. French training 
gave him style without sophistication. 


319 Ruckstuhl’s Hvening, marble, in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York 


197 


318 Boyle’s The Stone Age, bronze, in Fairmount Park, 
Philadelphia 


FREDERIC WELLINGTON RUCKSTUHL, 
Nis Sac N-LAL: 


FrepERIC W. RuckstuHL who was born at 
Breitenbach, Alsace, in 1853 was brought to 
the United States as an infant. Ruckstuhl’s 
training was with Boulanger, Lefebvre, and 
later under Mercié, at Paris. The last named 
has strongly influenced his work, even to the 
arrangement of some of his large monuments. 
The Evening also shows the rich modeling of 
the Toulouse school, but less of its submission 
to the posed model, and a very agreeable 
reminiscence of neo-classic severity. There is 
also a quality more American than French to 
be found in its relative seriousness and slow 
rhythm. The highly eclectic character of his 
work has won it popularity while seriously 
limiting its development. 


198 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


320 Donoghue’s Young Sophocles, bronze, in the Art Institute of Chicago 


CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS, N.S.S., N.A., N.LA.L. 


NigHAvs’ ready and industrious talent has made him one 
of the most productive of our contemporary sculptors. 
Born at Cincinnati in 1855, Niehaus studied at Cincinnati 
and at Munich. Either from his foreign training or from 
natural bent he manages at times in single figures to pro- 
duce a rhythmic composition rare in our sculpture. To 
this decorative gracefulness, as here, significance is some- 
times sacrificed, but the fluent drapery and easy pose of the 
Hahnemann make it a welcome exception to the customary 
heaviness of our monumental portraits. 


JOHN DONOGHUE 


For the lyrical audacity of his inven- 
tion the ill-fated sculptor John Donoghue 
has a place apart. Born at Chicago in 
1853, he died by suicide in 1903. 
Donoghue was a pupil of Jouffroy’s at 
Paris, and afterward settled in Rome. 
The Sophocles is his masterpiece, and 
one of our most brilliant sculptures; 
its author shares with Saint-Gaudens 
the ability to concentrate his accents, 
and to make his movement emotionally 
significant as well as decorative. New 
tribute has recently been paid this work 
in its paraphrase by Niehaus for the 
monument to Francis Scott Key. Com- 
parison of the two reveals the superior 
inspiration of Donoghue’s figure, whose 
youthful fire is brilliantly rendered in 
summary planes and sharp accents, 
and in the bold sweep of lyre and hand. 
The specific time and place (the poet is 
leading a chorus after the Battle of 
Salamis) show Donoghue’s independ- 
ence of the academism of Jouffroy, 
and only exceptional power could de- 
velop formal beauty out of so much 
particularity. A figure of Saint Paul by 
this sculptor stands in the rotunda of the 
Congressional Library at Washington. 


Niehaus’ Dr. Hahnemann, bronze, at Washington 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 


CLEMENT JOHN BARNHORN, N.S.S. 


Iw contrast with the eminently professional facility of Niehaus, 
Clement Barnhorn offers something of the charm of the 
amateur in conceptions greater than his technical resources. 
Born at Cincinnati in 1857, Barnhorn’s training under 
Bouguereau, Puech and Mercié at Paris was less effective in 
forming his style than his early practice as a wood carver, 
which in early bronze and marble work betrays itself in 
occasional blockiness, cylindrical limbs, and a tendency to 
incise rather than to model. The work here reproduced, 
however, has profited by these peculiarities to become a very 
fine modern evocation of Gothic style and content. This 
sympathy with medieval art is more apparent still in some 
of our youngest sculptors, who find in the Gothic and Ro- 
manesque of France a more congenial schooling for modern 


expression than is furnished by the traditional classic. 


323 Martiny’s Soldiers and Sailors Monument, bronze, at Jersey City, N. J. 


322 Barnhorn’s Madonna, limestone, in St. Mary’s 
Cathedral, Covington, Ky. 


PHILIP MARTINY, N.S.S., A.N.A. 


AMERICAN architecture at the high point of its 
ornateness some twenty-five years ago naturally 
enlisted both the monumental sculptors and 
also those whose vein was purely decorative. 
Among the latter one of the most popular is 
Philip Martiny, who was born in Alsace in 
1858 and came to America in the early ’eighties. 
An architectural decorator, trained by Eugene 
Dock in Paris, and assistant to Saint Gaudens 
in New York, Martiny came into prominence 
at the Chicago Exposition of 1893. Unlike 
most of our decorators of foreign birth, be 
contrasts his ornament with the structure it 


adorns; evading thus any architectonic limitations. His work, though devoid of serious content, achieves 
an impersonal lightness and gracefulness of effect that is of course an echo of the European rococo tradition, 
but too rare a feature in our sculpture not to be appreciated. 


200 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


324 Adams’ Primavera, bust in colored marble, at the National 
Sculpture Society Exhibition, New York, 1923 


LORADO TAFT, N.S.S., N.A., A.A.A.L. 


One finds a fuller and more robust expression 
and a wider imaginative range in the sculpture of 
Lorado Taft. Born at Elmwood, Illinois, in 1860, 
and trained at the Beaux-Arts under Dumont and 
others, Taft’s reputation as a sculptor has been 
unduly overshadowed by his repute as a writer 
and teacher. As teacher, he is the strongest force 
in the art world of Chicago and the Middle 
West; as writer he has given the most complete 
account of American sculpture, a source-book 
to which summaries such as the present one are 
always deeply indebted, not merely for facts 
but for thoughtful criticism as well. His later 
works have aimed more and more at mass effects 
of the type illustrated by the accompanying re- 
production, in which the beautifully modeled 
figures in half-relief derive a sensitive surface 
approaching the famous texture of Rodin’s work, 
from the contrast they afford with the unhewn 
stone. Especially noteworthy are Taft’s monu- 
mental fountains: at Paducah, Kentucky, and 
Bloomington, Hlinois; the Fountain of the Great 
Lakes and the Fountain of Time at Chicago; 
the Thatcher Memorial Fountain at Denver. 


HERBERT ADAMS, N.S.S., N.A., P.N.A., A.A.A.L. 


A CERTAIN tendency of American art in general has been 
to push to the extreme research of refinement. Among 
such adepts of the expressive “half-word”’ are Thomas 
Dewing in painting (No. 224) and Herbert Adams in 
sculpture. Herbert Adams was born at Concord, 
Vermont, in 1858. His five years at Paris under Mercié 
and other masters left him more of an individuahst 
than is the case with our French-trained sculptors as a 
rule. His affinities are less with France in any case 
than with the Italian Quattrocento and especially the 
work of the Della Robbias. Their delicate abstraction 
of sentiment is rivaled in the sculptor’s peculiar forte, 
viz., his polychrome busts of women, a recent example 
of which is here reproduced. Ill at ease in bodily 
anatomy and movement, the fineness of modeling dis- 
played in his heads courts and profits by the stiff test 
of polychromy. 


325 Taft’s Solitude of the Soul, marble, in the Art Institute of Chicago 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 201 


326 Tilden’s Mechanics Fountain, bronze, in San Francisco, Cal. 


DOUGLAS TILDEN 


As a class the sculptors born in the West are true to the energetic tradition of their origins, more experimental 
and less bound to traditional forms than their Eastern colleagues. We may group a few Westerners here. 
Douglas Tilden was born in Chico, California, in 1860. In spite of study in New York and Paris, Tilden’s 
work displays an unacademic originality more at home on the Pacific than the Atlantic coast. Athletes 
have been his favorite themes, wherein he strives to lift the genre to ideal significance, as also in the huge 
lever-punch of the Mechanics Fountain, served by a group of athletic nudes. 


327 


328 


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Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit, bronze, in the Museum 
of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. 


Rhind’s Father Brown Memorial, bronze, in the Church of St. Mary-the-Virgin, New York 


CYRUS EDWIN DALLIN, N.5.5., A.N.A., 
N.LA.L. 


Cyrus E. Daun has specialized on the Indian 
of the great plains. He was born at Springville, 
Utah, in 1861, when Indian fighting was still 
an ordinary incident. Dallin studied at Paris 
under Dampt and Chapu and is instructor in 
sculpture at the Massachusetts State Normal 
School. His most successful works have been 
Indians, whom he depicts in attitudes that lend 
themselves to monumentality, and with a dis- 
agreeable leanness of surface that gives them 
nevertheless a stark impressiveness of silhouette 
and a strong character. His groups are metallic 
and lack invention. His work, like that of the 
painter, Brush, has added to the richness of our 
art by showing the possibilities to be found in 
our Indian background. 


JOHN MASSEY RHIND, N.S. 


To effect a certain monumentality in decorative 
sculpture through adaptation of the late 
medieval forms has been the ambition, quite 
successfully achieved, of J. Massey Rhind. His 
birthplace was Edinburgh, Scotland, the year 
1860. Pupil of the Frenchman Dalou during 
his exile in London and afterward at Paris, 
Rhind belongs to the coterie of sculptors of 
foreign extraction who have supplied our de- 
ficiencies in decorative sculpture. A decorator 
by instinct, he naturally adopts traditional 
forms and employs them with great under- 
standing, as in this paraphase of a fifteenth- 
century Burgundian tomb. He is one of our 
few adepts in ecclesiastical art. 


SCULPTURE 


ISIDORE KONTI, N.S.S., N.A. 


IstporE Kont1’s art, on the contrary, is 
that of a graciously elegant worldliness full 
of recollections of the charmingly frivolous 
mood of the eighteenth century. Born in 
Vienna, Austria, in 1862, he came to the 
United States in 1890. Konti like Bitter 
received his artistic education at Vienna, 
which has retained the rococo tradition 
more than any other European center. 
Less responsive than Bitter to the atmos- 
phere of the New World, and ill at ease in 
the conventional allegory of American 
monuments, Konti is at his best in works 
like this which still embodies the fastidious 
humanism of the rococo style. 


ALEXANDER PHIMISTER PROCTOR, 
N.S.S., N.A., N.LA.L. 
From his choice of residence A. Phimister 
Proctor may fairly be grouped with the 
Westerners. He is internationally known 
as an animalier. He was born in Bozanquit, 
Ontario, Canada, in 1862 and trained under 
Puech and Injalbert at Paris. Proctor is 
the most finished of our animal sculptors. 
Without the impressionist realism of 
Kemeys or the force of Shrady, and having 
nothing in common with Roth’s simplifica- 
tions, this sculptor succeeds in making his 


SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 203 


329 Konti’s The Brooks, marble fountain,.on the estate of Samuel Untermyer, 
Greystone, Yonkers, N. Y 


beasts monumental without making them moral as well. His animals are two-dimensional, with a French 
elegance that recalls but does not equal the lithe surface movement of Barye. His latest work, The Pioneer 
Mother, is a monumental group of very effective composition, in which Proctor’s penetrating observation 
has wrought a masterpiece in the rendering of the weary steeds. 


330 Proctor’s Princeton Tiger, bronze, at Princeton University, Princeton, N. J. 


XII—14 


204 


331 Grafly’s Portrait Bust of Frank Duveneck, bronze, 
in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. 


FREDERICK WILLIAM MACMONNIES, 
N.S.S., N.A. A.A.A.L., Legion of Honor 
(France) 

To be the most audacious and exuberant modeler 
of his moment is the distinction of Frederick W. 
Macmonnies. He was born, paradoxically, in 
Brooklyn, New York, in 1863, before the City of 
Homes had become metropolitan. Master of a 
brilliant technique, learned under Saint-Gaudens 
and Falguiére, that is best employed in the 
rendering of exuberant movement, Macmonnies 
uses a summary modeling which brings the 
muscular action into sharp relief. His works have 
a restless élan that contrasts sharply with the 
usual American sobriety and reveals their author 
as one who, more than any of our sculptors, has 
assimilated the French point of view. Macmon- 
nies’ staccato style finds its usual and its true 
expression in bronze. The early interest in 
painting which led him to study that art for 
some months in Munich, is still revealed in his 
pictorial effects, whose brio often masks an 
emptiness of content. Macmonnies’ rococo genius, 
which would have been thoroughly at home in 
the eighteenth century, is adapted with difficulty 
to monumental work, in which he often misses 
the symbolic meaning. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


CHARLES GRAFLY, N.S.S., N.A., N.LA.L. 


Amone American sculptors who are academic in the good 
sense, that is, scrupulously studious of appearances and 
intelligently mindful of tradition, a very high place should 
be accorded to Charles Grafly. Born at Philadelphia in 
1862, trained in the Philadelphia Academy, and under 
Chapu and Dampt at Paris, this sculptor is a consummate 
modeler, whose powerful technique in his more ambitious 
ideal monuments has been wasted in unfruitful symbolism. 
Among our sculptors he is supreme in the portrait bust, 
which in his hands attains a minute convexity of surface 
like Rodin’s, but more objective, and equal to the French- 
man’s in its illusion of life. 


Macmonnies’ Bacchante, bronze, in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York 


332 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 


’ 


FREDERICK WILLIAM MACMONNIES 


Tue works here chosen for reproduction are among 
Macmonnies’ first and best. The Bacchante gives dynamic 
force to a rococo theme, and the Nathan Hale is a master- 
piece of staccato technique in bronze and an admirable 
expression of an ideally heroic sentiment. Macmonnies’ 
popularity has made him a prolific maker of monuments, 
in which vivacity and audacious complications make up 
to some extent for lack of content, and partly conceal his 
persistent borrowing of arrangements and motifs from 
French and other foreign models. His Diana is thus a 
brilliant accentuation of Houdon’s; a composition en- 
titled Pax Victrix is an ingenious combination of Cellini’s 
Perseus and Chapu’s Jeunesse; certain of his large 
monumental reliefs (such as the Army of the Brooklyn 
Memorial Arch) reveal more than a reminiscence of Rude’s 
Depart pour la Guerre on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 
In the Princeton Battle Monument, one of his latest 
large compositions, a sincere effort is visible after emo- 
tional as well as physical energy. The symbolism is 
however obscure and the surface retains the unfinished 
effect of the clay model. 


334 Barnard’s Rising Woman, marble, owned by John D. Rockefeller. 
Pocantico Hills, N. Y. 


v~o 
(=) 
Or 


333. Macmonnies’ Nathan Hale, bronze, in City Hall Park, New 
York, courtesy of the City of New York Art Commission 


GEORGE GREY BARNARD, N.I..A.L. 
Assoc. Soc. Nat. Beaux-Arts (France) 


GrorGcE Grey Barnarp is the only American 
sculptor with whose work one would associate 
the idea of sublimity. It is an aspiration that: 
has fallen on evil times, and has only partially 
been realized. Nevertheless their larger’ imagi- 
native vision gives to all the works of Barnard a 
peculiar importance. He was born at Bellefonte, 
Pennsylvania, in 1863 and studied under Carlier 
in Paris, but of the French masters he has felt 
Rodin’s influence most. Like Rodin in his last 
phase, Barnard tends to philosophize in marble 
and bronze, a tendency which often destroys 
the marble beauty which this born chiseler 
instinctively produces. Barnard’s modeling is 
far from Rodin’s intricate manipulation of 
surface, but his works are much more massive. 
He is an energetic collector of medieval art and 
a fine connoisseur. These activities are per- 
petuated in the Barnard Cloisters, Washington 
Heights, New York, which have become a 
branch of the Metropolitan Museum. 


206 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


GEORGE GREY BARNARD 


BARNARD’S epic subjects are constantly too vast 
for full expression; in groups this leads to con- 
fusion, but his single figures are at times in- 
vested thereby with pristine grandeur. In 
spite of eccentricities, Barnard is since Saint- 
Gaudens our most outstanding sculptor; he 
lacks Saint-Gaudens’ poetic clarity and subtle 
suggestion of environment, but excels him in 
plastic force and sense of mass. Michelangelo 
was the youthful sculptor’s ideal master, and 
he resembles the Florentine in his preference for 
marble, as well as in his love of the colossal 
and contempt for the merely decorative beauty. 
He is in fact the only one of our school at the 
present day who can think without effort in 
colossal terms. 


335 Barnard’s The Hewer, marble, at Cairo, Il. 


PAUL WAYLAND BARTLETT, 
N.S.S., N.A., A.A.A.L., Inst. 
de France (Corr. Memb.) 

BARTLETT was born at New Haven, 

Connecticut, in 1865 and died in 

Paris in 1925. He studied under 

Fremiet, Cavelier, Rodin, and 

Carrier, and started as sculptor of 

animals, in which he has no superior 

in this country. His career was 
mostly spent in France, where he 
made a reputation as a skillful 
bronze craftsman, especially in 
patinas. His monuments are often 
pitched in a high key difficult to 
sustain, and marred by over-modeled ° 
drapery, as in the Michelangelo of 
the Congressional Library at Wash- 
ington, and the Lafayette in Paris, 
here reproduced. Other well-known 
works by Bartlett are the Robert 

Morris in Philadelphia, the Ghost 

Dancer in the Pennsylvania Acad- 

emy, and the pediments of the 

New York Stock Exchange and the 


: $ 336 Bartlett's Lafayette, bronze, in the Place du Carrousel, Paris. A gift to the French 
Capitol at Wash ington. nation by the school children of America 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 207 


HERMON ATKINS MacNEIL, N.S.S., 
N.A., N.LA.L. 


THE native idealistic tradition of Palmer and French 
has been carried forward in a more modern technique 
and mood by Hermon A. MacNeil. He was born at 
Everett, Massachusetts, in 1866. Pupil of Chapu and 
Falguiére, and teacher at Cornell, the Chicago Art In- 
stitute, the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and the 
American Academy in Rome, MacNeil is a strong 
technician whose power of rendering specific detail 
and action sometimes interferes with the larger sig- 
nificance of his subjects. His convincing episodes of 
Indian life and his seal for the National Sculpture 
Society are his best works to date. 


337 MacNeil’s The Sun-Vow, bronze, in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


ATTILIO PICCIRILLI, N.S.S., A.N.A. 


Iraty, which has supplied virtually all our marble 
cutters, has also sent us sculptors, among them Attilio 
Piccirilli. He was born at Massa, Italy, in 1866 and 
came as a young man to the United States in 1888. 
This member of a well-known family of Italian marble 
workmen wields the family technique with the most 
imagination. Born near the Carrara quarries, Picci- 
rilli displays a delight in material which only those 
who carve their own marble can share. The neo- 
classic passion for whiteness clings to Piccirilli’s work, 


but a modern touch is afforded by the compact and 


338 Piccirilli’s Fragilina, marble, in the National Sculpture Society s . 4 
Exhibition, New York, 1923 simplified composition. 


208 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


BELA L. PRATT, N.LA.L., A.N.A. 


Bea L. Pratt endeavored to add a greater robustness to the 
idealism of the old school, and found the synthesis beyond his 
powers. Perhaps the very confusion’ of his ideals accounts for 
his popularity. People like the imprecise since it imposes no 
touch of definition. Pratt was born at Norwich, Connecticut, 
in 1867 and died at Boston in 1917. Pratt studied first under 
Saint-Gaudens, and then with Chapu and Falguiére in Paris. 
His most successful works were minor decorative themes in- 
volving forms of immaturity; his many monumental works are 
marred by the vicious Falguiére formulas of drapery and by 
over-modeling of features and anatomy. — 


KARL BITTER, N.S.S., N.A., N.LA.L. 


Or our many foreign-born sculptors, none except Saint-Gaudens 
more fully became one of us than Karl Bitter. He fled from 
Austria to escape a brutalizing military service and became the 
most whole-hearted of Americans. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 
1867 he escaped to the United States in 1889 and died in New 
York City in 1915. Trained like Konti under Hellmer at 
Vienna, Bitter was a most versatile sculptor, and responsive to 
the taste of his adopted country. Director of sculpture at 
three of our expositions, his early work had the baroque 
character and easy virtuosity which his European background 
could supply. This phase is illustrated in the Standard Bearers 
on rearing horses at the Pan-American Exposition of Buffalo. 
His charming talent as a little master is shown in the bronze 
doors for Trinity Church, New York. They brought a popu- 
larity upon which he built with good effect until his untimely 
death. 


339 Pratt’s Soldier Boy of the Spanish War, bronze, 


at St. Paul’s School. Concord, N. H 


plaster model in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for the Lowry Memorial, 


340 Bitter’s Pruning the Vine, 
Minneapolis, Minn. 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 209 


KARL BITTER, N.S.S., N.A., N.IA.L. 


Bitrer’s later work is in sharp contrast both to his miniature 
and to his “exposition” style, with no loss of versatility but 
with marked increase in thoughtfulness. Using a German 
simplification in the Lowry Memorial to underline his deco- 
rative scheme, he reverts to the rococo in the beautiful figure 
(designed by Bitter, but modeled by Konti after his com- 
patriot’s death) which crowns the barren Plaza Fountain. 
The swift precision which these Viennese inherited from 
Europe has here acquired stability and slower rhythm. 


342 Borglum’s The Flyer, bronze, at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. 


341 Bitter’s Abundance, bronze, on the Plaza fountain, 
New York, courtesy of the City of New York Art 
Commission 


GUTZON BORGLUM, Assoc. Soc. Nat. 
Beaux-Arts (France); Royal Society of 
British Artists 

THE numerous artistic controversies asso- 

ciated with the name of Gutzon Borglum 

should not obscure his position as a sculptor 
of power and originality. He has a streak of 
titanism which assorts none too harmoniously 
with his generally realistic outlook. He 
aspired to carve Stone Mountain as Ghirlan- 
daio longed to fresco the walls of Florence. 
Gutzon Borglum was born in Idaho in 1867. 
More versatile than his brother Solon, 


Gutzon Borglum is also a painter, and carries the pictorial impressionism common to both beyond the 
ordinary rules of plastic form. Obviously imitative of Rodin’s last phase, whose influence he encountered 
when he went as student to Paris in 1890, he substitutes for the Frenchman’s movement of surface a move- 
ment of silhouette. His mood easily ranges from the purely physical energy of the Mares of Diomedes in the 
Metropolitan Museum, to the pathos of his colossal head of Lincoln. 


210 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM, 
N.S.S., “AL NUAG 


THE younger Borglum pursued a more closely 
limited course with more coherent results. 
His plastic chronicle of the tragedy of the 
plains is intense and beautiful. He had led 
the horseman’s life. Born at Ogden, Utah, 
in 1868, he died in New York in 1922. This 
sculptor of Western genre was the son of a 
Danish physician, once a wood carver. Taught 
by his brother, Rebisso, and Frémiet in Paris, 
Solon Borglum’s long experience on the plains 
is reflected in his dominant physical interest 
and the unusual sense of atmosphere which 
make his impressionistic silhouettes suggestive 
of distance, hot sunlight, or storm. He was 
influential as a teacher and left a record of his 
methods in a remarkable book on design and 
compositions. His art is more at home in 
genre groups which seem sometimes to bring 
John Rogers up to date, but he has neverthe- 
less produced a number of monuments. 


4 Borglum’s Rough Rider, bronze, at the National Sculpture Society 
. Exhibition, New York, 1923 


EDMOND T. QUINN, N.S.5., 
A.N.A., N.LA.L. 


Tue objective rectitude of the older 
tradition of J. Q. A. Ward is con- 
tinued with a more positive artistry 
by Edmond T. Quinn, whose work 
until recently has been chiefly in 
portraiture. Born at Philadelphia in 
1868, he was a pupil of the Pennsyl- 
vania Academy, and later of Injalbert 
in Paris. Quinn has produced his 
best work in two recent monuments, 
the Edwin Booth of Gramercy Park, 
New York, and this Victory. An 
objective sculptor with a reverence 
for his subject rare in recent art, 
Quinn has found in this worn figure, 
compounded of the Parthenos and 
Jeanne d’ Arc, the deepest and truest 
note so far sounded in our World War 
memorials. There is in it the lassi- 
tude which pervaded Europe and 
America in the period succeeding the 
armistice — the sadness of a victory 
which counted the costs. The happy 
influence of Saint-Gaudens on our 
school is seen not merely in the fleet- 
ing resemblance of the figure to the 
master’s Peace of God, but also in the - ee o 
stark contrast of sculptur e and wall. 344 ~~ quim’s Victory, bronze, for the World War Memomal: 


New Rochelle, N. Y. 


ae tt 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 211 


ALEXANDER STERLING CALDER, N.S.S., N.A., N.LA.L. 


Tr is far from such self-contained work to the florid energy of the late A. Stirling Calder. However, both 
moods are valid. Calder strove to give reality to the somewhat theatrical vehemence of the French school, 
and if he did not wholly succeed, at least he achieved his own expression. Born at Philadelphia, in 1870, the 


son of a Philadelphia sculptor, Calder 
began his studies at the Pennsylvania 
Academy, and continued them with 
Chapu and Falguiere in Paris. He had 
charge of the sculpture at the Panama- 
Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, 
contributing to that display his Fountain 
of Energy, an acrobatic nude on horse- 
back supporting two winged genii on 
his shoulders. He resembles Mac- 
monnies in muscular accent and move- 
ment, but reflects a more contemporary 
Parisian fashion of loose pictorial 
composition. 


346 Weinmann’s General Macomb, bronze, 
at Detroit, Mich. 


SS = 


345 Calder’s Depew Memorial Fountain, bronze and mar 


ADOLPH ALEXANDER WEINMANN, N.SS., 
N.A., N.LA.L. 
Tur making of commemorative medals and plaquettes occupies 
some of our ablest modern sculptors. Most of them are also 
excellent in portraiture, as would be expected, and some in larger 
sculptures. Such is the case with Adolph A. Weinmann, perhaps 
our foremost medalist. Weinmann was born at Karlsruhe, 
Germany, in 1870 and came to the United States at the age of ten. 
Having served an early apprenticeship in ivory and wood carving, 


Soc 


‘ble, Indianapolis, Ind. 


Weinmann later worked under Saint-Gaudens at the Art Students’ League. An artist of powerful line, 
Weinmann carries the unhesitating precision evinced in his medals into monumental sculpture. The virile 
movement of his silhouettes has significance as well as authoritative beauty. (See also No. 367.) 


347 Bronze Plaque by Brenner for the fiftieth anniversary of 
the University of Wisconsin 


212 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


VICTOR DAVID BRENNER, N.S.S. 


Except for an occasional portrait bust and a 
fountain ‘at Pittsburgh, Victor D. Brenner has 
usually stuck to his specialty of the medal and 
small relief. In this field he is an acknowledged 
master. He was born at Shavely, Russia, in 
1871, and got his early training from his father, 
a Russian Jewish seal engraver. Brenner also 
studied under Ward in New York and with 
Roty in Paris, the famous medalist, the most 
robust and the most delicate of masters. This 
may have favored a rare combination of quali- 
ties of good relief in miniature in Brenner’s 
work, namely, clear contours that neverthe- 
less coax the light and shade, and an economy 
of forms with sufficient area left to the un- 
worked field. 


HENRY MERWIN SHRADY, NS5., 
A.N.A., N.LA.L. 


Tue old naive realism that comes down from 
Rush never completely surrenders. One finds 
it vigorous in such a recent sculptor as 
Henry M. Shrady. He was born in New York 
City in 1871 and died in 1922. Shrady died 
just as his one great work, the Grant Memorial, 
was completed. Completely self-trained, Shrady 
was primarily an animal sculptor, of unrelenting 
realism which gives great force to his horses in 
movement, as compared with the decorative or 


impressionistic effects sought by others. Extended to the inanimate detail of uniforms and accoutrements — 
to say nothing of the accurate but stationary gun carriage — such realism becomes merely photographic. 


348 Shrady's Artillery Coming to Halt, bronze, for the Grant Memorial, Washington 


~. vre* S 


plaice tal 


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ee ee a ee 


os 5 ee es 


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ee eee ee ee eT 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 213 


BESSIE POTTER VONNOH, 
N.S.S., N.A. 

Bessie Porter VoNNoH who was 
born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1872, 
is perhaps the ablest of a number 
of American women artists who 
have worked in small sculpture 
on familiar themes. <A pupil of 
Lorado Taft, Mrs. Vonnoh is 
best known for her small groups 
of mothers and children. Her 
style, like that of nearly all our 
woman sculptors, is too sensitive 
to be monumental, and a trend 
toward the elusively pictorial has 
led to experiments with modern 
costume resembling Troubetskoy’s. 
The group here reproduced sug- 
gests Carpeaux’ Danse, but sub- 
stitutes for the ideal content of 
the French group a charming 
realism which materializes the 
decorative scheme by staccato 
accents, and by the gaucherie of 
immaturity. Such work may be 
regarded as a modern equivalent 
for the terra cotta figurines of 
ancient Greece. ; 


349 


350 Lukeman’s Francis Asbury, bronze, at Washington 


Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s Allegresse, bronze, in the Detroit Institute of Arts 


HENRY AUGUSTUS 
LUKEMAN, N.S.S., A.N.A. 


Ir is a tribute to the gener- 
osity of Daniel C. French as 
a teacher that his pupils and 
assistants have pursued quite 
various ways. Perhaps the 
closest by temperament to 
the master is Augustus Luke- 
man, born at Richmond, 
Virginia,in 1872. Lukeman’s 
training, save for a_ brief 
period under Falguiére in 
Paris, has been mostly under 
French, whose formulas he 
is only now beginning to 
discard. His merit lies in 
ability to give mass and 
form to drapery and to keep 
his faces and realistic al- 
lusions sufficiently out of 
focus. He has a monumental 
instinct, but an insufficient 
mastery of technique makes 
the handling of detail trouble- 
some to him. 


214 THE PAGEANT 


Roth’s Polar Bears, bronze, in the Detroit Institute of Arts 


351 


JANET SCUDDER, N.S.S., A.N.A. 


JANET ScuDDER represents the American sculpture that 
has been profoundly influenced by the early Renaissance. 
She has explained the matter herself in her charming 
autobiography ‘Modelling my Life.” She was born at 
Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1873. Miss Scudder had a varied 
training, first at the Cincinnati Art Academy, then under 
Lorado Taft, later with the Academies Vitti and Colarossi 
in Paris, and finally with Macmonnies. She has made her 
reputation, sufficient to warrant representation in the 
Luxembourg Gallery at Paris, with fountain and garden 
figures, whose extreme refinement of style only emerges on 
close acquaintance, so complete is their assimilation to their 
setting. The movement of Macmonnies’ Bacchante and 
Diana has left its mark on Miss Scudder’s Victory, but 
her master’s lean energy is here reduced to delicate rhythm. 
The sensitiveness of this figure is a quality of nearly all 
the work of the women sculptors of America, exception 
being made of the monumental style of Malvina Hoffman. 
They find their best expression for this reason more often 
in the statuette than in the statue, and in decorative 
pieces whose fresh charm and dainty minutize annually 
delight the visitors to our exhibitions. 


OF AMERICA 


FREDERICK GEORGE RICHARD ROTH, 
N.S.8., N.A., N. LAD epoaee 


Our most searching modeler of animals is 
Frederick G. R. Roth, who was born in Brook- 
lyn, New York, in 1872. Roth is exceptional in 
having studied at Vienna, under Hellmer and 
Meyerheim. He represents the more modern 
type of animal sculptor, having neither the 
summary realism of Kemeys nor the decorative 
prepossessions of Proctor, but excelling both in 
mass and in ability to make his surfaces as ex- 
pressive as his silhouette. The modern quality 
of his work consists in deliberate deformations 
which emphasize the characteristics of species. 
Roth is more versatile as to material than most 
animaliers, adding marble and glazed terra 
cotta to the usual bronze. In glazed terra cotta 
he has had success in adapting animal figures 
to the design of tiles. 


i ONO gs 


352 Janet Scudder’s Victory, bronze statuette, in the National 
Sculpture Society Exhibition, New York, 1923 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 


ANDREW O’CONNOR, JR. 


ANDREW O’Connor, JR., another of French’s pupils, has worked 
out a more modern and impressionistic modeling. Born at 
Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1874, and the son and pupil of the 
sculptor of the same name, O’Connor worked afterward with 
French in New York. He is the author of the central door and 
tympanum of St. Bartholomew’s in New York, and of an original 
Lincoln at Springfield, Ill., whose active pose is what one would 
expect from O’Connor’s restless fingers. His expressive sculpture 
has a rapid movement of surface which contributes as much as 
vigorous attitude to its vivid effect. Such qualities align O’Connor 
with the Rodin following, particularly with that wing which has 
accentuated Rodin’s dictum that sculpture is “all lumps and 
hollows’? to Rosso’s theory that it consists entirely of light and 
shade. O’Connor’s American training has sufficed to check 


this tendency, and his statues have weight enough to give form 
to their impressionistic modeling. 


354 Chandelier by Keck, bronze, in the Education Building, Albany, N. Y. 


215 


O’Connor’s General Lawton, bronze, 
at Indianapolis, Ind. 


CHARLES KECK, N.S.S., A.N.A. 


Tue problem of the young sculptor of 
to-day is largely to reconcile with his 
personal independence the mass of remi- 
niscence forced upon him by academic 
education. That the problem is soluble 
is Shown by the sculpture of Charles Keck 
and Anna Hyatt Huntington. Charles 
Keck was born in New York City in 1874, 
coming from a family of craftsmen. He 
was a pupil of Saint-Gaudens, and Fellow 
of the American Academy at Rome. He 
is best known for his monuments, es- 
pecially a beautifully executed equestrian 
Jackson at Charlottesville, Virginia. His 
monuments, while often lacking content, 
carry their scale better than much of 
our sculpture of colossal size. Practice 
as architectural decorator has taught 
him to combine weight with fitness; 
the craftsman is evident in refusal to allow 
the lovely figures of his Chandelier to be 
obvious at the expense of design. 


353 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


355 Anna Hyatt Huntington’s Jeanne d’ Arc, bronze, on Riverside Drive, New York, courtesy of the City of New York Art Commission 


ANNA V. HYATT (HUNTINGTON), N.S.S., .N.A. 


SIMILAR decorative fastidiousness not devoid of monumentality is the goal which Anna Hyatt Huntington 
has reached through various stages of intelligent experimentation. Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 
1876, the author of the equestrian Jeanne d’Arc made her reputation first with small bronzes of animals, 
in which she at times rivaled the disregard for conventional composition of her teacher Gutzon Borglum. 
Of late her theme has been Jeanne d’Arc, the subject of two reliefs and a medal — charming evocations of 
the fifteenth century — in addition to the boldly conceived monument here reproduced, which contrasts with 
the sensitive genre generally cultivated by our women sculptors. 


A 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL a7 


356 Fraser's The End of the Trail, bronze, at San Francisco, Cal. 


JAMES EARLE FRASER, N.S.S., N.A., N.IA.L. 


Tue ablest of the many pupils of Saint-Gaudens is surely 
James Earle Fraser, a universal craftsman, equally able in 
the medal, the portrait and the monumental. Fraser was 
born at Winona, Wisconsin, in 1876 and worked successfully 
with Saint-Gaudens and with Falguiére in Paris. Fraser is 
able, by the narrowest of margins, to combine a most 
sensitive record of transient reality with monumental 
necessities. In his most famous work, here reproduced, the 
casual composition is ennobled by the fatality of the bowed 
figure and linked with the universal by the storm that blows 
across it. On Fraser one may say that the poetry of Saint- 
Gaudens has descended, if not his strength. 


MAHONRI YOUNG, N.S.S., N.A. 


A soMEWHAT similar pictorialism inspires the sculpture of 
the very versatile artist Mahonri Young, who was born 
at Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1877. Young’s exceptional power 
as a linear draftsman and his practice of etching have con- 
ditioned his sculptural style, which is made up of extraordi- 
narily convincing silhouettes of movement and posture and a 
loose impressionism of surface. His statuettes are sketches 
of physical effort with little of the deeper content embodied 
in Meunier’s laborers, or of the atmosphere of Abastenia 
Eberle’s Windy Door-step (No. 358), but possessing in high 
degree the etcher’s power of swift selection. 


357 Young's The Rigger, bronze statuette, in the 
Newark Museum Association, Newark, N. J. 


218 


358 Abastenia St. Leger Eberle’s The Windy Door-step, bronze 
statuette, in the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass. 


RUDULPH EVANS, A.N.A. 


As we survey these younger sculptors we must 
expect a very varied and experimental art 
without any apparent characteristics of a school, 
unless it be the universal responsiveness to current 
sculptural fashions. Rudulph Evans has come 
quickly forward under this program. He was 
born at Washington, D. C., in 1878 and studied 
under the antipodal masters Falguiére and Rodin. 
Evans gained fame through the beautiful statue 
which is here reproduced from the figure in the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rep- 
licas of the Golden Hour exist in the collection of 
Frank Vanderlip and in the Luxembourg gallery 
at Paris, the last named having been purchased 
for the Luxembourg by the French Government. 
The motif is rather German than French, being 
commonly used for German garden figures. The 
Teutonic suggestion ends with this, for Evans’ 
girl has the purity of Palmer’s White Captive 
(No. 298), sophisticated by French technique, 
and not free from Falguiére’s inevitable sugges- 
tion of the posed model. A bronze Boy with a 
Panther (worthy rival of McCartan’s Diana in 
the Metropolitan Museum), now in the possession 
of Mr. Frank Vanderlip, shows an increased spon- 
taneity of pose, and more fluent modeling. From 
Lorado Taft, Evans’ Golden Hour has won praise 
as “one of the finest things in American sculp- 
ture ...a rare combination of delicacy and 
strength, of frankness and reticence.” 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ABASTENIA ST. LEGER EBERLE, N.S.S., A.N.A. 


Tue study of labor in small sculpture has also been the 
theme of Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. She has treated it 
with sympathy, learning and gusto. She was born at 
Webster City, Iowa, in 1878, and studied with Kenyon 
Cox and George Barnard. The genre which deals with the 
tragic and picturesque in the life of the laborer and his 
people, created by Meunier in Belgium and Thornycroft in 
England, has found many exponents also in America, 
notably Mahonri Young and the author of the Windy 
Door-step. Miss Eberle’s statuettes surprise the picturesque 
and achieve a strong suggestion of atmosphere and color. 


Evans’ 7'he Golden Hour, marble, in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York 


359 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 219 


EDWARD McCARTAN, 
N.S.S. 


In Edward McCartan’s hands 
small sculpture has chiefly served 
its traditional and idealist pur- 
pose, with, however, a_ suf- 
ficiently individual accent. 
McCartan was born at Albany, 
New York, in 1878. He sought 
his training in the Art Students’ 
League and the Ecole des Beaux- 
Arts at Paris. McCartan has 
been mainly a maker of small 
bronzes; his best essay in monu- 
mental work, here reproduced, 
is still a genre composition, and 
by that token well-fitted to its 
subject. Feminine in content 
and approach, McCartan’s sure 
delicacy of touch, particularly 
in his statuettes and relief, seems 
like Hellenistic refinement of 
Warner’s Hellenic brevity. 


ROBERT INGERSOLL 
AITKEN, N.S.S. 
(ex-president), N.A., 
N.LA.L. oo 
A MORE fiery spirit informs the 3260 McCartan’s Eugene Field Memorial, bronze, in Lincoln Park, Chicago 
eclecticism of Robert I. Aitken, who was born at San Francisco in 1878. A pupil first of Tilden, Aitken 
studied at Paris from 1904 to 1907. He is a sculptor of accomplished technique, but subject to the model 
or manner of the moment. Aitken reflects the sequence of sculptural fashions, including in his output, beside 
the French nudes of the Fountain of Earth, some photographic World War soldiers, experiments in the Rodin 
style, and recent Modernist simplifications. 


aM 


361 Aitken’s Fountain of Earth, at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, Cal. 
XII—15 


ce 


220 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Gregory’s Wood-Nymoph, marble garden figure owned by 
Mrs. H. P. Whitney, Roslyn, Long Island 


JOHN GREGORY, N.N.S. 


Tue desire to recover the nervous grace of archaic 
sculpture! has animated many of the sculptors 
of Northern Europe and some Americans. Of 
these John Gregory is among the most accom- 
plished. He was born in London, England, in 
1879, and came to the United States in 1893. 
Gregory studied in New York, Paris and Rome, 
and was a pupil of Barnard and Mercié. A 
stylist like Manship and Fry, he is less two- 
dimensional, and less purely decorative in inter- 
est. The rapid silhouette of Manship’s works 
acquires a plastic suavity in his hands; he con- 
trols his archaism to the ends of a lyric content 
which is generally appropriate to its Hellenic 
vocabulary. ; 


CHESTER BEACH, N.SS., N.A., N.I.A.L. 


WHOLLY modern if not yet entirely personal and 
consistent is the plastic vocabulary of Chester 
Beach. He was born at San Francisco in 1881, 
became a pupil of Verlet and Roland at Paris. 
and also studied at Rome. A versatile artist, 
known as a medalist as well as a worker in various 
stones, bronze and ivory, he displays in each 
field the power of making his medium expressive 
by its mere texture. Often reminiscent of Rodin’s 
sculptured epigrams, his works are for the most 
part arresting but fragmentary, moving slowly as 
yet toward monumental significance. His works 
include the Sacred Fire in the Academy of Arts 
and Letters, New York, and a reredos for Saint- 
Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie. 


363 Beach’s Wave Head, marble, in possession of the sculptor 


rhs) 
fas) 
—_ 


SCULPTURE SINCE THE CENTENNIAL 


364 Manship’s Centaur and Nymph, bronze, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


PAUL MANSHIP, N.S.S., N.A. 


Or our numerous eclectics and archaists Paul Manship, for the intelligence of his anthologizing and the 
brilliance of his technique, is easily chief. Manship was born at St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1885. He is the 
most prominent member of a group of stylists, issuing chiefly from the American Academy in Rome, and 
including Sherry Fry, John Gregory, and C. P. Jennewein, who represent a movement internationally 
evident toward ignoring content in the interest of decorative beauty. This they find mostly in the 
archaism of Greece or the Far East, or a combination of both. The exotic quality of such imitation 
appears in its application to American themes, as in Manship’s amusing Revolutionary Soldier at Danville, 


Illinois. > 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


2 
rhs) 
rhs) 


365 Malvina Hoffman's The Sacrifice, marble, for the Harvard War Memorial, now in the Cathedral 
of St. John the Divine, New York 


MALVINA HOFFMAN 


Tue criticism of many of our woman sculptors that they are deficient in energy does not apply to Malvina 
Hoffman. Her early work had the unabashed physical exuberance of Macmonnies. The French Government 
paid her the honor of buying work of this sort. Latterly she has followed the trend toward abstraction. 
She was born in New York City in 1887 and trained under Gutzon Borglum and Rodin. Malvina Hoffman 
has here, in the Harvard War Memorial, advanced in Modernism beyond her teachers to the architectural 
simplifications of the Germans, Lederer and Metzner. The kneeling mother is perhaps too particularized to 
assist the generalization; and not enough so to add a note of poignancy. 


ANTHONY DE FRANCISCI, N.S. 


WE close our rapid survey with one of those new Americans whose art has grown modestly and surely out of 
a background of sound artisanship. Anthony de Francisci was born in Italy in 1887. A garden sculptor of 
the Italian marble cutter school, De Francisci’s medals are far superior to his statues. They lack the sharp 
definition with which Weinmann exacts full value for every contour, but avoid the sketchiness whereby many 
; sculptors confuse me- 
dallic art with low relief. 
His power lies in a justly 
balanced composition 
and a nice sense of the 
part to be assigned to 
the vacant field. Wein- 
mann’s low relief shows 
the schooling of Saint- 
Gaudens, who lifted 
American bas-relief to a 
leading rank in art. He 
more than other pupils 
has absorbed the master’s 


effective sense of scale. 


366 De Francisci’s crew medal, for the 367 Weinmann’s Medal- Vail Award 
British-American cup s 


a ae | ere oe, eS 


CHAPTER XIX 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 


LTHOUGH the various processes of engraving have always been used as a 
means of direct artistic expression, their main use has been for reproduction, 
the engraver copying and multiplying another man’s designs. This was em- 

phatically the case in Europe toward the end of the seventeenth century, when the 
printed picture made its first timid appearance in the British colonies of America. Eng- 
land, moreover, was very backward as compared with the European continent, and the 
British colonists were naturally still more backward. Until the nineteenth century, the 
few American engravers were mostly amateurs or silversmiths who on occasion passed 
from engraved ornament and lettering on metal to feeble pictorial design. Here the chief 
exception is Peter Pelham, a professionally trained mezzotinter who came to Boston in 
1727, but evidently was unable to maintain himself by his art, since, in 1738, we find him 
teaching ‘Dancing, Writing, Reading, painting upon Glass, and all kinds of needlework.”’ 
From the year 1800 all sorts of engraving were practiced in America with professional 
competence, chiefly as a means of reproduction. Artist engraving, or better painter- 
engraving, is rare before 1870, and not really common until 1890, when photo-mechanical 
engraving relieved the manual processes of their immemorial task of reproduction. 

These facts dictate our general divisions. First, for convenience, the colonial period 
up to 1800 will be briefly sketched, then reproductive engraving will be traced by proc- 
esses until their supersession by photo-engraving. Painter-engraving, again treated ac- 
cording to processes, will naturally claim a special section. I shall depart from this 
classification to the extent of treating such special subjects as book and magazine illus- 
tration separately, as well as political and social caricature. Here clarity will atone for 
apparent repetition. 

Before proceeding, a word on reproductive engraving in general is essential. At all 
times the greater number of printed pictures have served a utilitarian purpose, so the 
making of them should be regarded rather as a fine trade than as an art, narrowly speak- 
ing. In America the majority of printed pictures have been made by or for commercial 
firms. One must remember that the stamp on a blacking box and the label on a pickle 
bottle are just as much prints as a painter-etching or a lithograph. The thing becomes 
art not by virtue of its destination but by virtue of beautiful design and execution, quite 
as, for the same reason, a state paper or a commercial report might be good literature. 

The study of our colonial engraving belongs rather to antiquarianism than to art. 
Our colonial printed pictures were few and mostly by untrained engravers who, to meet 
a commemorative or patriotic emergency, dropped other tools for the graver or burin. 
The following explanations of the different forms of engraving early in use in America 
may be helpful. 

Woodcutting is usually executed by drawing, later by photographing the design on 
a polished block of boxwood cut across the grain. If the design is in lines, the interven- 
ing wood surface is cut away by an instrument of triangular or lozenge section called a 
graver. This is pushed by the ball of the hand, or, more usually, the block is pushed 
against it. When the lines are cleared and brought into relief, the block is inked and a 
reversed impression may be obtained by pressing paper upon the inked block. Since the 

223 


224 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


wood block is in relief it can be set up with type and printed at the same time. This, with 
‘ts rich blacks, which harmonize with the type face, make it the ideal method for book 
illustration, especially that of a decorative kmd. When the design is not in lines, but 
in tone, the tones must be translated by the woodcutter into areas of parallel or crossed 
lines. This translation, which involves technical difficulties and great drudgery, was 
later effected more handily by the white-line process which will be later described. 

Line engraving is executed on copper or other suitable metal, by grooving out the 
lines of the design with an instrument of triangular or lozenge section called a burin. 
It is pushed by the hand and the deeper lines must be gone over many times. The burin 
raises a roughness or “burr” along the lines which is generally polished away. ‘The plate 
is then covered with printers’ ink and wiped clean, leaving the ink in the engraved lines. 
To print, a wet sheet of paper is laid on the plate, and the two are run through a roller- 
press under heavy pressure. This drives the paper into the inked lines, and when the 
paper is pulled away from the plate it brings away the ink and the reversed design with it. 
In the nineteenth century the engraved copper was often electroplated with steel for 
greater durability or the engraving was executed on a steel plate. In line engraving the 
preparatory work is generally shortened by biting in the first lines with acid. 

Except that the dot instead of the line is the unit, stipple engraving is executed like 
line engraving. The dot, or rather the depression which holds the ink and makes the 
dot, may be engraved by flicks of the burin, by special punches, or lines of regularly 
spaced dots may be made with a toothed wheel called a roulette. The effect is rather light 
and powdery and lends itself to coloring. If this is effected by carefully painting the plate 
with colored inks and printing, we have a color print. A colored print is one that is 
printed black and then colored by hand. 

Mezzotint is a method of engraving in tone instead of lines. Usually the entire surface 
of a copperplate is roughed with a toothed instrument called a rocker. The plate will 
now hold ink and print uniformly black. Where middle tones are wanted, the roughness 
is somewhat smoothed down by a scraper or burnisher. These passages hold less ink 
and print lighter. Where white is desired, the plate is burnished smooth. The printing 
is as in engraving, but with less pressure. The method of drawing may be described as 
negative, the lights being taken out and the darks left, whereas other forms of engraving 
may be regarded as positive, the lights being left and the darks put in. However, by 
drawing directly with the rocker and leaving the lights, a positive method is possible 
also in mezzotint. The mezzotint plate may be steeled, with some loss of richness. 

Aquatint was invented in France about the middle of the eighteenth century, to cope 
with the difficulty of reproducing wash drawings, and as a means of color printing. The 
copperplate is covered by granulations of resin and put in the acid bath which bites into 
the copper exposed between the dots of resin. Or the plate can be mechanically pitted, 
as by running it through the press with sandpaper. The rather loose and uniform granu- 
lation thus produced can be scraped or burnished away after the fashion of mezzotint. 
Etched lines may be added if desired, and a color print may be made by carefully coloring 


the plate or superimposing colors by printings from several plates successively. More 


often the print was colored by hand. This and lithography are the most flexible of the 
old reproductive processes, and their refinements of copyism have hardly been surpassed 
by photo-engraving. 

In preparing this study I have freely used an unpublished manuscript by William M. 
Ivins, of the Metropolitan Museum. He also selected about three-quarters of the illus- 
trations. Without so substantial a nucleus, I should hardly have ventured upon a study 
as difficult and perplexing as it is interesting. To Dr. Frank Weitenkampf of the New 
York Public Library, apart from the aid of his indispensable book, American Graphic Art, 
I owe many suggestions and repeated courtesies. 


a a ti 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 225 


R Te homdus 


MoAkir 


"ge Ramnts aft 


368 From the woodcut of Richard Mather in Green, John 


Foster, the Earliest American Engraver, Boston, 1909 


THOMAS EMMES 
Tue first American line engraving on copper (see 
technical explanation, page 224) was also of a 
Mather, the Reverend Increase Mather, Richard’s 
more famous son. Concerning Thomas Emmes, 
who unhandily scratched the portrait on copper 
after an earlier print, and signed it, we have no 
information. It was used as a frontispiece for 
Increase Mather’s tracts, Ichabod and The Blessed 
Hope, in 1701 and 1702. To his distinguished 
subject, the engraver did scant justice. In capacity 
and success Increase Mather compared well with 
the contemporary diplomat prelates of Europe. 
Aside from being a valued preacher and theologian 
and President of Harvard University, he had for 
years served his colony at London as Commissioner 
to the throne, and in this function had won the 
confidence of two kings and of the Protector Crom- 
well. Little of this patrician career is suggested 
in Thomas Emmes’ engraving, but other and better 
likenesses tell the story eloquently. (Vol. XI, 
No. 32.) There was small chance for the develop- 
ment of the arts in seventeenth-century New Eng- 
land, whose population was mostly farmers clus- 
tered in tiny villages and busy with clearing the 
forests or freeing the soil from roots and stones. 
Farmers and fishermen struggling hard to make a 
living for themselves and families were not likely 
to develop into artists. 


JOHN FOSTER 


A RUDE woodcut of the Reverend Richard Mather is, 
so far as we know, the first engraving of any sort to be 
mate in the British colonies in America. It was cut asa 
frontispiece for an obituary pamphlet published in 1670. 
The engraver was a young Harvard graduate and school- 
master, John Foster, who was born in 1648 and died in 
1681. He was a parishioner of Mather’s at Dorchester, 
and the crude portrait must be regarded as the tribute 
of an amateur to a beloved pastor. Foster apparently 
had as his exemplar the equally unskillful painting now 
owned by the American Antiquarian Society, at 
Worcester, Massachusetts. At least, his untrained hand 
was guided by much good will, for something of the 
gentle, timorous and self-distrusting character of the 
first of the Mather divines transpires from the rude 
effigy. In 1674, John Foster set up the first printing 
press in Boston, and his name is associated without 
much certainty with early map-making in the colonies. 
He represents the willingness and indeed the need of 
the pioneer craftsman to lay his hand to any sort of 


task. (See Vol. XI, No. 20.) 


369 From the line engraving of Increase Mather in Mather, The Blessed 
Hope, Boston, 1701, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
New York 


226 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


a le wes 


2 U df ve 


BME EE EB CLES é 
Muba tis Sure EXV, MBCENNVIT 


370 From the mezzotint portrait of Cotton Mather in the New York Public Library 


NATHANIEL HURD 


For more than thirty years after Pelham’s death there was no 
good portrait engraving in the colonies. However, the con- 
tinuity of the engraver’s art was feebly kept alive by the silver- 
smiths. In their own art they were as a class admirable designers. 
They all understood chasing and engraving on metal, and many 
of them made bookplates or tradesmen’s cards, while some oc- 
casionally undertook an illustration, a portrait, or even a carica- 
ture. The Bostonian, Nathaniel Hurd, 1730-77, is fairly char- 
acteristic of the lot. His bookplate in elaborate rococo style for 
James Wilson shows that Hurd was no bad ornamentist and a 
light hand with the burin. He did as well a portrait, an illustra- 
tion of a hanging, a masonic certificate, a form for a military com- 
mission, and one for a Massachusetts bond. In short, his activi- 
ties were very much those of a modern stationer-engraver. The 
Boston of Nathaniel Hurd was one of the most important shipping 
and trading centers in the colonies. The sea-trade had brought 
wealth to many of its citizens. The existence of Harvard college 
in Cambridge helped to stimulate its intellectual life. In such a 
community a craftsman like Hurd would have enough calls on his 
skill to make it possible for him to devote all his time to his en- 
graving. Only under such conditions could skill develop. 


PETER PELHAM 


Ir was again a Mather who was com- 
memorated in the first mezzotint (see 
technical explanation on page 224) 
scraped in America, in 1727; and with 
it we reach at last a professionally 
competent work. Peter Pelham made 
it from his own characterful portrait of 
the Reverend Cotton Mather, catching 
adequately the somewhat pompous be- 
nignity of the famous divine and church 
historian in his sixty-sixth year. It was 
the first framing print made in the 
colonies. In England, Pelham had en- 
graved twenty-three portraits, and there 
he must have enjoyed a certain con- 
sideration, for he was permitted to paint 
and engrave the children of George II. 
During the twenty-four years of his 
activity at Boston until his death in 
1751, he scraped fifteen portraits and a 
large view of Louisbourg. Copying 
usually his own competent portraits or 
those of Smibert, he prepared the way 


- for better work than his own toward the 


end of the century. Pelham is our first 
professional maker of printed pictures. 
In his time New England was a well 
developed community with many towns 
whose history ran back a hundred years. 


o- 


Pr f7la oy ide Coady Pea’ 


o——— oe 


a 


y) 


a 
ay 
1 
o ff . 
4 
; ¢ 
f 
ake 


From the bookplate of James Wilson 
sir the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


3 


Js, < dit te 


ee ee 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 


PAUL REVERE 


Tue illustrious patriot, Paul Revere 
who was born at Boston in 1735 and 
died there in 1818, was as good a 
silversmith as Hurd, but a much 
poorer engraver. His father, son of a 
French Huguenot who settled in 
Guernsey, emigrated to Boston where 
he worked as a goldsmith. The son 


acquired a taste for drawing and 


engraving designs on silver. His 
most famous plate, that of the Boston 
“Massacre” of 1770, is possibly his 
worst, though its political effect was 
doubtless considerable. Henry Pel- 
ham claimed the credit for the design, 
and it seems likely that in the interest 
of patriotism Paul Revere did not 
shrink from plagiarism. (See Vol. 
VIII, No. 177.) Since the engraving 
is undoubtedly his, the plate appro- 
priately finds its place here. It is fair 
to say that Paul Revere signs himself 
merely as engraver. Among his other 
prints the most interesting are por- 
traits of John MHancock, Samuel 
Adams and King Philip; caricatures 
concerning the Stamp Act (see Vol. 
VIII, No. 134), and views of Boston, 
including one of Harvard College. 


227 


_The Biroopy Massacre pepetatedin Kingeds reek BOSY QV onMorh§4in oby aparty of the 295 REG T 


Eucravd Prmted > Solghb 


UnhappyBostow! fee thySons deplore, If ealding drops fromRage fiom Angi 
Thyhallowd Walks belineard with guiltic{kGore: [I {peeclels Sorrwws lab ring fara Tongue. 
While faithlefsP—1 and@hisfavageBands, ovaffa weeping World ciuaught appeate 
With nmrdrousRoncour flretch their bloodyHands;|The plaintiveGlofts of Vidinis fuch as thefe: 'f 
LikefierceBarbanans gnmmg or thewFrey: ‘ 


; hePatriotis copmuséars for each are fhed. 
Approve the Camage,md enjoy the D ay Sloriatis Tiibute which embalms the Dead . {Shall teach aJupor whe never canbe bili. 


| She eenheyyty by tad were AML Sas! Gray SamiMaverick, Jam £C aLpwEu Crispus Arruckis ¥ Par*Cane 
Milled Sex 2v00aede® two of there. (Cunsst? Mons vJororC1.anx) Movie Vm, 


372 From the original engraving The Bloody Massacre, etc., in the New York 


Historical Society 


PETER RUSHTON MAVERICK 


In New York the fashionable engraver was Peter Rushton 
Maverick, who was born in 1755 and died in 1811. His 
skill was slight enough, as may be seen from the bookplate 
of John Keese. The classical urn in a garland dates it 
near the year 1800. His son, Peter Maverick, was a 
line engraver of greater ability and had the distinction of 
teaching A. B. Durand (Nos. 382, 390) and of being an 
original member of the National Academy of Design. 
There were two other sons, Samuel, an engraver, and 
Andrew, a print seller. The elder Maverick was kept 
fairly busy in engraving book illustrations, but nothing of 
his work except that which grows out of his activities as a 
silversmith, mostly bookplates, has even minor artistic 
interest. When Maverick was twenty-one years old, 
there began the British occupation of New York which 
was to continue some seven years. The provincial town 
therefore became familiar with the ways of the British 
gentry represented again and again among the officers. 
This was an important cultural contact and must 
inevitably have helped to shape fashions in such things 
as the Maverick bookplate. 


373 From the bookplate of Jonn Keese in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


228 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


4p Ly Gs Plate La 


a We ot cco the wae anadeere 
Gig tinea Povinca Lae “ Ae 
i ‘PPrerinaal Company at albainglon. 6 Ske Fade 


. 374 From the line engraving The Battle of Lexington in the Lexington (Mass.) Historical Society 


375 From a furniture maker’s label by James Smither in the Library Company 
of Philadelphia, Ridgway Branch 


lerytanies om the road Yo Con cope 


ae Lexung ton 


AMOS DOOLITTLE 


STILL another silversmith-engraver was 
Amos Doolittle, born in Cheshire, Connecti- 


cut, in 1754. He was a soldier in the Con- : 


tinental Army, and his best-known engravings 
are four large and crudely executed prints 
of the battles of Lexington and Concord, 
published in 1775 after Ralph Earl’s designs. 
After the war he was a fairly prolific pur- 
veyor of little portraits and architectural 
views to the magazines and of illustrations, 
mostly pirated from English sources, for 
the book publishers. He lived on to see the 
dawn of the golden age of American engrav- 
ing. He died at New Haven in 1832. (See 
also Vol. VI.) 


A TRADESMAN’S CARD 


Mucn engraving at this time and well into 
the new century was devoted to tradesmen’s 
cards. These varied from simple lettering to 
very elaborate ornamented designs such as the 
commercial card engraved by James Smither 
of Philadelphia, an Englishman who came 
over in 1773, of a well-known Philadelphia 
furniture maker and dealer. In our own time 
we have seen a return to this artistic form 
of advertising in the calendars and booklets 
issued by certain fashionable purveyors. 


nat 


os 


2 


a, 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 229 


EDWARD SAVAGE 


AFTER the Revolutionary War, there was a notable re- 
vival of engraving, mostly of English inspiration. Since 
the results were manifest in the new century, we need: 
here mention only Edward Savage, the first generally 
resourceful engraver of American birth. He was born at 
Princeton, Massachusetts, near Mount Ascutney, in 1761, 
and after a wandering life he returned to his native village, 
to die there in 1817. Passing from the silversmith’s trade 
to portrait painting, he went to London and learned 
mezzotint, and the new processes of stipple and aquatint. 
In London, from 1791, he began with Knox and Washing- 
ton that notable series of Revolutionary generals and 
statesmen which he continued on his return to the United 
States about 1794. He worked in Philadelphia, where he 
painted a panorama of New York and Boston. Despite 
his generally admitted talent, he was little employed, his 
prints running only to twenty. They are mostly after his 
own paintings, are in every method then practiced, and 
include, beside portraits, such subjects as the sea fight of 
the Constellation and L’ Insurgent, The Eruption of Mount 
Etna and Inberty as Goddess of Youth. His austere and S76 ortralt, 1792 wot Gorge, Washington, in the Metropolitan 
: : Museum of Art, New York 
understanding style closes creditably the not very 
glorious chapter of early American engraving in which the interest is more antiquarian than artistic. 
Such are the main features of the very modest annals of our graphic figure design at a moment when English 
engraving was at its best. Yet the Americans of the seventeen nineties, even if they were producing nothing 
of consequence, were buying the prints of Hogarth, Sir Robert Strange, Thomas Watson, J. Raphael Smith, 
Richard Earlom and Thomas Stothard, and a few were reading French books with admirable illustrations 
engraved by Gillot, Cochin, Gravelot and Le Mire. All this, with the habit of European travel resumed and 
increased after the Revolution, effected an improvement in general taste which insured for the new century a 
marked advance in the practice of all the arts and especially in that of the printed picture. 


JAMES BARTON LONGACRE 


Epwarp Savace had firmly established stipple engraving as a fit medium for small portraiture. He lived 

to see such successors as Peter Maverick and W. S. Leney prac- 
ticing it acceptably in the early years of the new century. But 
the prominent engraver here is James Longacre. Born of 
Swedish stock in Pennsylvania in 1794, he was at twenty-one 
obviously the most brilliant engraver employed on Delaplaine’s 
Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished American 
Characters, Philadelphia, 1815. His stipple portraits of Benjamin 
Franklin, after Martin, and of the soldier-architect Alexander 
Macomb, after Sully, have an energy rare in the medium. 
Delaplaine’s was not supported, and stopped publication, being 
artistically ahead of its times. But it left young Longacre well 
launched. He was to do more than two hundred portraits of 
American statesmen, authors and military leaders. For the period 
between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War he is by far 
our most important single source of information. At New York, 
with James Herring, between 1834 and 1839, Longacre published 
The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, the 
best collection of the sort that we have produced. It was virtu- 
ally the culmination of his brilliant career, for in 1844 he became 
engraver to the United States Mint, drudging there for twenty- 


377 cheers the arr’. a ttee = hes ee i 
Benjamin Franklin by artin, in Delaplaine’s Re- s : “ 4 
pository, Philadelphia, 1815 five years until his death at Philadelphia in 1869. 


230 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


/ 378 From the stipple and colored etching Sedgley, the Seat of Mr. Wm. Crammond, in The Country Seats 
of the United States of North America 


WILLIAM BIRCH 


STIPPLE engraving (for technical explanation see page 224), a feeble medium in most hands, soon ceased to 
exist as an independent method, becoming an expedient for producing tone in designs first made in line. As 
early as 1808, William Birch was using stipple to shade the little etchings which he published under the title 
Country Seats of the United States of North America. 'The prints are generally hand-colored, and, without 
pretensions as art, give a pleasant impression of the country homes of our early American magnates. Birch 
was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1755, made promising beginnings as an engraver in London, came in 
1794 to Philadelphia, where, besides engraving many views of the city, he made portrait miniatures in enamel. 
He died there in 1834, leaving a son, Thomas, who had already gained repute as a painter of our naval victories 
in the War of 1812. William Birch seems a case of a fairly able engraver who went off badly under the de- 


379 From a stipple and line engraving after the ine 1832, 
of N. P. Willis by or eer ae in N. P: Willis, 


Sacred Poems, New York, 


pressing effect of hackwork in provincial conditions. 


JOHN HALPIN 


Ir is unnecessary to trace stipple engraving through the mixed 
styles, mostly bad, to its end about 1870, when it yielded to 
the improved wood engraving. It was chiefly used as a means 
of softening line engravings which were already too soft. One 
may trace it through the gift annals from about 1830 to the 
Civil War and thence to its end in the sleek and sentimental 
illustrations of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Occasionally the mixed 
manner produced unexpectedly handsome results, as in John 
Halpin’s portrait of N. P. Willis after Greenough’s bust. 
The flesh is stippled, the rest worked in line. Of John Halpin 
we have little information except that he practiced his art in 
Russia and was active in New York from about 1850. Al- 
though by a kind of accident stipple had the priority over line 
engraving in America, line engraving here as elsewhere was, 
until the improvement of the woodcut, the chief method of 
fine reproduction. Apart from its multifarious use in illustra- 
tion and commercial work, it served chiefly for portraiture 
and for copying paintings. Up to the popularization of pho- 
tography in the late 1860’s, the person of taste ordinarily had 
steel engravings on his wall for his pleasure and in his port- 
folio for his studies. 


——— 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 231 


JOHN NEAGLE, N.A. (hon.) 


NaTuRALLyY the best talent of the engravers was ap- 
plied to what was reckoned the finest and most serious 
branch of the art. Ingenious ways were invented to 
multiply plates from a steel cylinder, and, unhappily, 
ruling machines and lathes, hand or even machine 
driven, eventually hastened the line engraver’s very 
slow and laborious task. But before the resultant de- 
cadence of the art, a very creditable chapter was to be 
written. It opens auspiciously with patriotic commem- 
oration. The portraits in Delaplaine’s Repository, 1815, 
were mostly in the favorite stipple. But three were in 
line, of which two were by the young Englishman, 
John Neagle. His was a dry but competent hand, as 
one may gather from his portrait of President Jefferson. 
Neagle was born in 1796 and trained by his father. He 
came while still young to Philadelphia, dying there 
in 1866. 


380 From the line engraving after the portrait of Thomas Jeffer- 
son by Bass Otis, in Delaplaine’s Repository, Philadelphia, 1815 


LONGACRE’S ENGRAVING OF 

DANIEL BOONE 
WHEN, in 1834, Delaplaine’s was reissued and enlarged 
as The National Portrait Gallery, stipple had passed out 
of fashion, and most of the added portraits were in 
line. Even the editor, Longacre, now occasionally 
worked in line and used it as an auxiliary in his very 
picturesque likeness of the pioneer and explorer, 
Daniel Boone. 


3 


381 From the stipple and line engraving after the portrait of Daniel 
Boone by Chester Harding, in The National Portrait Gallery, Phila- 
delphia, 1834 


ASHER BROWN: DURAND, N.A., P.N.A. 
Amone the additions in The National Portrait Gallery 
were eleven portraits in line by Asher Brown Durand, 
representing the highest American achievement in this 
field. It is hard to imagine anything more vivid than 
the figure of the New Jersey Revolutionary leader, 
Major Aaron Ogden. And here one may note that, 
brilliant and faithful as Durand always was when copy- 
ing the portraits of others, he surpassed himself when, 

_ as in this case, the exemplar was his own. Durand’s life 
has been treated earlier (Nos. 42, 68), and we shall have 


- ° s 382 From Durand’s line engraving after his portrait of Major 
to return to him as a master of the framing print. Aaron Ogden, in The National Portrait Gallery, Philadelphia, 1834 


232 


383 From the line engraving after a daguerreotype of Henry 


Inman, in C. 
York, 1846 


Edwards Lester, The Artists of America, New 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


CHARLES BURT 


WuEN the National Portrait Gallery, greatly enlarged and 
brought down to date, was reissued in 1856, the numerous 
additions tell the story of the decline of line engraving. 
The portraits from the first edition are emphatically 
the best. The new portraits are largely in ill-understood 
mixed methods, and some show the levelling trace of the 
ruling machine. During the decline some excellent por- 
traits were still cut in line. One may signalize here 
Charles Burt’s spirited portraits for C. Edwards Lester’s 
The Artists of America, New York, 1846. The style is 
vigorous and sketchy, the preparatory etching being left 
to do much of the work. Burt, born in Edinburgh in 
1823, came to America in 1842, and died in New York 
in 1892. He is best known for his large plates after the 
genre paintings of William Mount, but he readily turned 
his hand to any form of engraving including that of bank- 
notes. The ominous legend “after a daguerreotype,” 
scratched under the portrait of Inman, reminds us that 
line engraving was waging a losing fight not only with 
such more facile methods as mezzotint and lithography, 
but also with photography. There remained still a long 
history for the line-engraved portrait, but chiefly as a 


commercial sort — in the encyclopedia and on the banknote, on the postage stamp, and in the biographical 


books on local celebrities. 


WILLIAM EDGAR MARSHALL 
Happiny, a few men of talent loved line engrav- 
ing enough to keep it faintly alive as an art. The 
best of these was William E. Marshall, who was 
born in New York in 1837 and died there in 1907. 
His careful and understanding work gradually 
built up for him a well deserved popularity. He 
was indeed the last American line engraver to 
make a public impression. Originally trained as 
a banknote engraver, he studied portrait painting 
in Paris and there exhibited in the Salon. He is 
known for his few carefully studied engraved 
portraits, most of which are after his own 
paintings. His James Fenimore Cooper of 1861 
is one of the best. His Longfellow and Grant 
and Lincoln (1866) have become standard, and 
widely known, the Lincoln especially so. For 
Beecher’s Life of Jesus the Christ, 1871, Marshall 
executed a head of Christ after Da Vinci and 
later produced another conception of his own, 
first modeling the head in clay and also making a 
cartoon sketch from which his engraving, of 
colossal size, was produced in 1880. Some 
survival of the stiffness of the banknote style 
places Marshall lower as an executant than 
Durand, but he remains one of our most serious 
and impressive masters of line engraving. There 
is little to regret in his work save its much too 
limited extent. 


384 From Marshall’s line engraving after his portrait of Abraham 
Lincoln, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


J 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 233 


THE LARGE 
PATRIOTIC PRINT 


Tue large framing print 

in line began in the serv- 

ices of patriotism. John 
Trumbull’s admirable 
Revolutionary _battle- 
pieces, though engraved 
abroad, were preparing 
theway. American naval 
successes during the War 

of 1812 were duly cele- 
brated by the engravers. 
Indeed, enforced isolation 
from England, the center 
___ of fine print-making, of- 
fered opportunity to our 
own talent. Among the 
many Marine pleces 
painted by Thomas Birch 

_ we select the United States 
and Macedonian, pub- 


> lished in 1813. It was 385 From the line engraving, 1813, after the painting United States and Macedonian by Thomas Birch, 
courtesy of Kennedy & Co 


rather mechanically en- 

____ graved by Benjamin Tanner, who was born in New York in 1775 and died at Baltimore in 1848. It shows 
that the average practice was improving. Line engraving in America fairly reaches its majority with Asher 
__ B. Durand’s fine print of 1820 after Trumbull’s The Declaration of Independence (Vol. VIII, No. 235). It 
abounds in ingenious formulas to suggest texture and even color. It need only be mentioned here for its ex- 
cellent quality as engraving and for its just popularity. Of the vast number of patriotic framing prints it is 
___ the only one that does not look too old-fashioned on a modern wall. It was the harbinger of a succession of 
patriotic prints, civic or military. Deathbeds of statesmen, famous congressional debates, conferences, battles 
were the chief categories. The work was fairly creditable, but the stream showed no tendency to rise above 
its fountain head in Durand’s Declaration. 


A POPULAR PRINT 
AFTER DURAND’S 
PAINTING 


SUFFICIENTLY characteristic of 
the class is a line engraving of 
1845 after Durand’s painting 
The Capture of Major’ André. No 
less than three hands worked on 
the steel, Alfred Jones (1819- 
1898) for the figures and James 
Smillie and Hinshelwood’ for the 
landscape. Born in Scotland in 
1807, James Smillie came to New 
York in 1829. He had had good 
English training and became the 
successor in public esteem of 
Durand. He was elected to the 
National Academy and died in 
Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1885. 


386 From the line engraving after the painting The Capture of Major André by A. B. Durand 


234 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THE 
LANDSCAPE 
COLLECTIONS 


In popularizing the best 
American paintings line 
engraving rendered amore 
valuable and permanent 
service. Here Asher B. 
Durand is doubly a pio- 
neer — in the figure and 
in landscape. His six 
prints in The American 
Landscape, 1827, set a 
standard which the many 
subsequent and more suc- 
cessful landscape collec- 
tions never reached. His 
Ariadne (No. 390) of 
1835, after Vanderlyn, is 
still the best American 
line engraving, and won 
distinction in Europe 
when the art was at its high point. In both cases Durand had admirable originals. Thomas Cole and Durand 
himself were exceptional landscapists. Wanderlyn had added to native talent the severe training of the 
French schools. Let us follow separately the two lines of landscape and figure painting. Durand’s print after 
Cole’s Winnepesaukee established a type. Everything is minutely rendered; extreme lights and darks are 
sacrificed to a general pearly gray. The burin line performs the miracle of simulating a delicate wash. One 
may guess that Finden’s incredibly delicate transcripts from Turner’s water-color vignettes set a fashion 
hardly robust enough for the larger plate. 


OTHER LANDSCAPE PORTFOLIOS 


Te American succession in engraved landscape is chiefly in illustration, but there were separate plates after 
Cole, as later after Bierstadt, F. E. Church and Thomas Moran. From the Civil War, landscape albums of 
widely varying merit abound, popularizing the pictures of the Hudson River and Heroic schools. One of the 
most charming of these col- 

lections is The Home Book of 
the Picturesque, published by 
Putnam in 1853 and reissued 
as A Landscape Book in 
1868. Among the artists are 
Durand, J. F. Cropsey, T. A. 
Richards and R. W. Weir. 
John Halpin, H. E. Beckwith 
and James Smillie, sometimes 
after his own designs, are the 
chief engravers. The little 
prints, often vignetted in the. 
English fashion, are beauti- 
fully printed on India paper. 
Our cut shows a rarity for its 
moment, a winter scene by 
Régis Gignoux best remem- 
bered as the master of George 
Inness. (See also No. 70). 


if US {hap Oe Ji. rea . = t ae 
387 From Durand’s line engraving after the painting Lake Winnepesaukee by Thomas Cole, 
in The American Landscape, 1827 


Gene eie 


388 From Halpin’s line engraving after the painting Housatonic Valley by Régis Gignoux 
in A Landscape Book, New York, 1868 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 235 


PICTURESQUE 
AMERICA 


THE swan song of land- 
scape line engraving was 
ambitiously if not sweetly 
sung in the two portly 
volumes of Picturesque 
America which the Apple- 
tons published in 1872, 
under William Cullen 
Bryant’s editorship. 
Noteworthy for its wood- 
cuts, which must later 
occupy us, the collection 
marks the senility of 
American line engraving. 


Everything is slicked and _ ago From Hinshelwood’s line engraving after the painting Smoky Mountains, North Carolina, 
blurred, the ruling ma- y Homer D. Martin in Picturesque America, New York, 187 


chine executing passages too fine for the hand and eye, and painfully mechanical. The great popularity of 
the book is a sufficient commentary on the taste of the moment, for it is to be feared that it sold rather for its 
bad steel engravings than for its excellent woodcuts. The leading engraver, Robert Hinshelwood, is a good 
type of the general utility engraver toward the end of the art. He was born at Edinburgh in 1812, came to 
New York in 1835, where he married a sister of the engraver, James Smillie, whose designs he often reproduced. 


DURAND’S MASTERPIECE 


Duranv’s Ariadne after Vanderlyn and Musidora after his own painting, both published in 1835, were 
landmarks in several ways. They were Durand’s farewell to an art he had graced; they secured for the nude 
its place in our sun, they set a high standard for the art of reproductive line engraving. After nearly a century, 
the Ariadne still seems to deserve the encomiums with which it was greeted. It is throughout executed with 
a gentle strength, it is well unified without sacrifice of the rich darks, it is atmospheric in the landscape through 
wise utilization of the 
preparatory etching, it is 
broadly modeled and 
most gracious in mood. 
It was a calamity for 
American line engraving 
when Durand quit such 
work as this for forty 
years of mediocre land- 
scape painting (No. 68). 
However, Durand may 
have had a just sense that 
he was quitting an art 
which, having reached its 
height, was sure to de- 
cline in favor of an art 
only at its beginnings. 
And it is fair to say that 
Durand’s service as a 
pioneer in our landscape 
is hardly less important 
than his fuller accom- 


ee . Rig, vB . 
we ore ee re Rts aoe ‘i plishment as an engraver. 
390 From Durand’s original copperplate, 1835, after the painting Ariadne by John Vanderlyn, 


courtesy of the United States National Museum, Washington 
XII—16 


236 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA ¥ 


STEPHEN ALONZO SCHOFF 


However, he had left a good example which, 
according to their abilities, his successors en- 
deavored to follow. A few plates were cut 
after pictures in the academic style by Vander- 
lyn and Daniel Huntington. Of such Stephen A. 
Schoff’s engraving after Vanderlyn’s Marius 
Amid the Ruins of Carthage is character- 
istic. The picture was painted at Rome and 
won the gold medal of the French Salon in 
1808. The engraver was born in Danville, 
Vermont, in 1818, studied with Delaroche at 
Paris, and became skillful in every form of en- 
graving. He died at Brandon, Vermont, in 
1905. Marius was issued in 1842 to the mem- 
bers of the Apollo Association. This organiza- 
tion, which soon became the Art Union, for 
some twenty years did a very useful work in 
encouraging American painting. It bought 
pictures and raffled them off to its members, it 
gave annually to its subscribers a print after 

an American painting, it conducted ably an _ 
Art Bulletin, the first of its kind in America, ‘ 
which offered not only considerate criticism of 
our own art, but also valuable extracts from 
the current criticism of England. Eventually, 
the Art Union and its Philadelphia namesake 


ran foul of the anti-lottery act, and their useful 


391 From the line engraving, 1842, after the painting Marius Amid the 3 
Ruins of Carthage by Joba Vanderlyn, in the New York Public Library work was prematurely suppressed. 


THE ART UNION GENRE PRINTS 


NATURALLY, such organizations had to consider popular appeal and their subscription lists. So their conces- 
sions to the grand style : 
wereexceptional, and their 
staple was the patriotic 
genre of T. H. Matteson, 
nicknamed from his sub- 
jects “ Pilgrim” Matteson, 
and the popular humor of 
William S. Mount and 
R. Caton Woodville. Such 
framing prints were widely 
circulated and though of 
slight artistic worth at least 
helped to popularize our 
native painting. Old ’76 
and Young ’48 is obviously 
a print that would sell well 
among people still talking 
of the battles of the Mexi- 
can War. The mantel 
and furniture are typical 
of mid-nineteenth-century 


American taste. (See Vol. 


DL 392 From the line engraving, 1851, by J. I. Pease after the painting Old ’76 and Young '48 
a = by R. C. Woodville, in possession of the publishers 


it te 


a ee ee 


Fd gti RL hg a Eg 


S. 
tJ 


a ee 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 237 


EDWIN DAVIS FRENCH 


BETWEEN 1820 and 1850 line engraving did a great service to 
American painting in the way of winning a public for the native 
school. Thereafter the art gradually decayed, partly from 
within through undue use of the mechanical banknote methods 
, — unhappily most of the line engravers were drawn into this 
drudgery — partly from outside causes. There had always 
been a formidable competition of better European engraving. 
It increased about the time of the Civil War. A little later, 
etching and wood engraving were proving themselves more 
flexible methods of reproduction. Then line engraving had 
educated its public away from itself. Well-to-do people of the 
1860’s had learned to buy American paintings. Finally, the 
cost of line engraving forbade it the wide field of popular 
imagery where cheap commercial lithography reigned supreme. 
So line engraving dwindled about 1876 to the modest usefulness 
which it still retains to-day. To sketch this aftermath of a great 
art would be to study articles of familiar fine use — banknotes, 
postage stamps, letterheads, corporation bonds, membership 
certificates, diplomas, menus and bookplates. Only the last 
branch is of importance artistically. We must represent it by 
a single example of the work of our most prominent bookplate 


y eS 
| Bowe 


393 Bookplate of Princeton University, line engraving 
with stipple, 1897, courtesy of the Librarian 


designer and engraver, Edwin Davis French (1851-1906). Like most of his colleagues, he studied intelligently 
the prints of the German little masters, and his bookplates, like their prints, are often rather marvels of firm 
and delicate craftsmanship than of fine design. Such is the case with the bookplate here reproduced, which is 
chiefly remarkable for its rich and vigorous ornament. It is unsafe to predict of any art that it has passed 
beyond the possibility of revival, yet it seems unlikely that reproductive line engraving will ever recover its 
lost prestige. Photogravure reproduces any sort of a graphic original with equal fineness and with far greater 
fidelity. So it seems that line engraving may with difficulty keep its present circumscribed position as a 
respected but generally neglected survival. 


394 From the etching by Stephen A. Schoff after the portrait 
of Mrs. Adams by William M. Hunt, in the American Art Re- 


view, 1880 
a 


REPRODUCTIVE ETCHING 


By the 1860’s reproductive etching (for technical ex- 
planation see page 253) was rapidly replacing line en- 
graving for framing prints. The fashion, as_ usual, 
came tardily to America in the late 1870’s. Etch- 
ing is so flexible a process that it readily lends itself to 
reproduction, but that task does not enlist its specific 
qualities. It is easy for us to see that the vogue of the 
reproductive etching had something artificial about it. 
Etching was a novelty and considered intrinsically pre- 
cious. However, there is something to be said for the 
fashion. The warmth and freedom of etching were more 
agreeable on the wall than the cold bleakness of line 
engraving. In any case, the phase of reproductive 
etching is so much a part of our history of taste that it 
must be briefly written. Many of the reproductive 
etchers had been already engravers in other methods 
who thriftily, and generally ably, tagged on to the new 
fashion. Such was the case with the veteran line en- 
graver, Stephen A. Schoff. It is hard to believe that 
this urbane interpretation of a Boston lady is by the 
same hand that some thirty years earlier engraved so 
mechanically Vanderlyn’s Marius (No. 391). 


238 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


JAMES DAVID SMILLIE, N.A. 


We have again to do with an engraver in James D. 
Smillie’s really brilliant etching after F. A. Bridgman, an 
expatriate American Orientalist of repute. It is extraor- 
dinarily light and luminous. Smillie had learned banknote 
engraving from his father, James Smillie. Gradually 
liberating himself from this work, he became one of the 
most versatile of our early etchers, a landscape painter of 
distinction, and a National Academician. Under wood 
engraving (No. 421) we reproduce one of his fine landscape 
designs. He was born in New York in 1833 and died there 
in 1909. Reproductive etching survived in portraiture 
after its vogue otherwise had waned. Jacques Reich’s 
minutely worked portraits of American statesmen, Wash- 
ington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln and Cleveland, are 
almost of our day. 


395 From the etching after the painting Lady of Cairo Visiting 
by F. A. Bridgman, in the American Art Review, 1880 


JACQUES REICH 


Sucu a portrait as the Cleveland may seem to retain too 
much of the photographic character of its origmal. Never- 
theless, it is a memorable presentation of a massive person- 
ality, and it has taken its place in popular regard with 
Savage’s Washington (No. 376) and Marshall’s Lincoln 
(No. 384). Reich was born in Hungary in 1852. He was 
trained at the academies of New York and Philadelphia and 
in Paris. He died in 1923. 


396 From the etching in Selected Proofs, New York Public Li- 
brary, after a photograph by Pach Bros., corrected by sittings 
from life. © 1906 by Jacques Reich 


THOMAS JOHNSON 


Anotumr etched portrait that has become standard is 
Thomas Johnson’s Walt Whitman. It is highly pictur- 
esque and very rich in the blacks. It conveys admirably 
the somewhat histrionic and professional geniality of the 
poet toward a world of camarados. Its free handling of 
the needle as compared with Reich’s engraver-like dryness 
may be noted, and as well the skillful handling of ink on 
plate to obtain tone. Thomas Johnson is better known as 
an excellent wood engraver in white line, but like many of 
the men of the 1870’s he readily turned his hand to any 
medium. In short, the mark of the decade in reproduc- 
foal Seeder: ave : tive work is that of a constantly improving craftsmanship 
OM ae Nace grr at a Cedtirg. se and a greater versatility. 


é 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 


JOHN SARTAIN, MASTER OF MEZZOTINT 


Mezzorint (for technical explanation see page 224), 
notwithstanding its early introduction by Peter Pelham, 
was practiced only sporadically among us until John 
Sartain came from England in 1830. In particular, those 
big framing prints after famous contemporary painters 
which are the glory of the English school of engraving 
were virtually lacking here. Probably the fame of such 
mezzotinters as J. Raphael Smith, Richard Earlom and 
Charles Turner meant an impossible competition for the 
American engraver, while the abundant English supply 
must have amply met the quite limited American demand 
for fine mezzotints. Indeed, Sartain, who could have 
done it admirably, made few framing prints, and those 
mostly small. You must seek his more than fifteen 
hundred engravings, nearly all mezzotints, through a 
score of gift annuals, in the files of such magazines as 
Graham’s and the Eclectic, and in the richly illustrated 
books of American poetry of the 1850’s and 1860’s. He 
was born in London, in 1808, and came to Philadelphia 
in 1830. There he was active for over forty years. He 
outlived his favorite art by many years, dying in 1897, 


398 From the mezzotint after the portrait of Robert Gilmor 
by Lawrence, in the New York Public Library 


well after all the old forms of reproductive engraving had yielded to the new photomechanical processes. 


SARTAIN’S POPULARITY 


THE popularity of Sartain’s mezzotints was due to something that had nothing to do with their art — their 


highly finished look as compared with the competing line engravings and woodcuts. 
a man of his gifts was asked to copy poor originals almost without exception. 


It was unlucky also that 


American portraiture had 


waned as the side-whisker waxed, and, as for the ladies, they had apparently conspired to present a book-of- 


399 From Sartain’s mezzotint after the painting Col. Marion Inviting a British Officer to pine 
by John B. White, in possession of the publishers 


beauty front as monoto- 
nous as it was insipid. In 
short, Sartain made the 
mistake of being born a 
generation too early or 
too late. The Colonel Mar- 
ion represents his techni- 
cal ability in the framing 
print. Before Sartain’s 
time the versatile Edward 
Savage scraped a big plate 
of Etna in Eruption, print- 
ing it in colors in 1799. 
This ambitious and exotic 
creation is to-day chiefly 
interesting as our first 
color print. In a smaller 
mezzotint of a little girl 
with a mousetrap, after 
Reynolds, Savage essays 
the current English man- 
ner. The success of such 


‘early and isolated efforts 


was not sufficient to jus- 
tify their continuance. 


240 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


a eee 


400 From the mezzotint line and roulette, after the painting 
Preciosa by Daniel Huntington, in Longfellow’s Poems, Phila- 
delphia, 1845 


JOHN , CHENEY 


Mezzorint was of course used in the mixed manner. 
Here John Cheney, popular in the annuals for his heads 
of pretty women, must represent alone a considerable 
class of fashionable engravers. In the print representing 
Longfellow’s Preciosa, here reproduced, it would be an 
ingenious critic who could fully disentangle the methods. 
There is much line engraving and more rouletting, the 
deep blacks in the cloak, hair and landscape are some 
form of mezzotint in which both the rocker and the 
roulette have served. It is a brilliant example of a rather 
dubious method and thoroughly characteristic of its 
moment as of Cheney’s agreeably sentimental idealism. 
Cheney was a Connecticut man, born in South Man- 
chester in 1801. He studied in Europe and for the charm 
of his work achieved a great temporary popularity on his 
return. However, he was obliged to abandon engraving 
as the art declined. He died at his native village in 1885. 


JOHN HILL, ENGRAVER IN AQUATINT 


Tue long endeavor of the reproductive engraver to repre- 
sent tone otherwise than by webs of lines seemed to find 
its solution about the middle of the eighteenth century 
in the invention of aquatint (see technical explanation 


on page 224). But the method required a very delicate and sure hand. The accidental character of the grain 
made correction of a mistake very difficult. For this reason the process was short-lived even in England and 
Europe. In the United States it was practiced even more transiently by Englishmen — such as John Hill and 
William J. Bennett, N.A.—who came over expressly for the purpose. Some of our early engravers, as Edward 
Savage, did aquatints exceptionally. But the art was not firmly established until John Hill came to New 
York in 1816. He was born in London in 1770. He devoted himself in America to big panoramic prints of 
Hudson River scenery, often after the paintings of W. G. Wall. His first considerable enterprise was Pictur- 
esque Views of American Scenery, 1819, after Joshua Shaw. It was largely devoted to wild nature. The plates 
are skillfully handled and either lightly or fully tinted. His notable achievement was the big prints after 
Wall for The Hudson River Portfolio, 1828. Here he was celebrating the most settled and idyllic landscape 
that America then afforded. Hill died in 1850, on the banks of his beloved river, at West Nyack, New York. 


401 From the Gaia after the painting New York from Weehawken by W. G. Wall, 


the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 241 


ROBERT HAVELL 


Rosert HaAveE.., who was born in Reading, Eng- 
land, in 1793, was enlisted at thirty in a notable 
American enterprise when he was chosen to en- 
grave Audubon’s Birds of America. The making 
of these great plates, still unsurpassed in their 
kind, occupied Havell for eight years between 
1827 and 1839. Then he followed his work to 
New York. Havell settled at Ossining, where 
he executed many most excellent aquatint views 
of Hudson River scenery. His list is a large 
one, and the work is always distinguished. 


THE PASSING OF THE AQUATINT 


Sometimes Havell made his own designs, as in 
the view of West Point here reproduced. He 
lived until 1878 — engravers are a long-lived 
race — dying at Tarrytown, New York, in his 
eighty-fifth year. He had witnessed both the 
passing of aquatint under the competition of 
lithography and its partial revival as an auxiliary 
to painter-etching. While the careful topo- 
graphical aquatints of John Hill and Robert 
Havell look somewhat old-fashioned to-day, they 
are far better than the commercial lithographs 
which superseded them, and they contributed 
powerfully toward the creation of a cult of land- 


402 From the aquatint by Robert Havell after the drawing from nature, 
in Audubon, Birds of America, London, 1830-39 


scape by which our painting was to profit. Of the aristocratic copperplate methods aquatint was the first 
to go, but they all yielded ground toward the Civil War to the old art of wood engraving and the new 
Cinderella of the reproductive methods, lithography, both of which in their turn were within a couple of 
decades to surrender the reproductive field to the new process of photo-engraving. 


— a 


403 From the aquatint, 1848, View of West Point by Robert Havell aftei his painting, courtesy of Kennedy & Co. 


242 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THE BEGINNING OF LITHOGRAPHY 


LirHocrapHy (see technical explanation, 
page 254) appeared in America in two in- 
significant illustrations, of 1819, by Bass 
Otis. It made up for lost time, and within 
fifteen years had become, with the possible 
exception of the woodcut, the most usual way 
of making the printed picture. Affording the 
first easy method of printing in colors, it 
served the most various uses. Commercially 
it was available for purposes of a circus 
or theater poster all the way to a bottle 
label. Wherever color was desired, in valen- 
<— tine, Christmas card, membership certificate, 
404 From the stchaatagih The Mill by Bass Otis in the Analectic ornate title-page, it was lithography that 

de Mee ed delivered the goods. It multiplied colored 
framing pictures, mostly of the crudest sort, the joy of modest householders who, without aspiring to the 
real oil painting, disliked the gray austerity of the steel engraving. Virtually the entire story up to the ap- 
pearance of painter lithography, almost in our own time, is subartistic, and very much so. Lithography 
afforded new resources to illustration which will be considered under that rubric. The new process of easily 
reproducing a drawing first attracted such painters as Bass Otis, Rembrandt Peale and Henry Inman. Bass 
Otis made the first American lithograph, a little sketch of a mill 
published in the Analectic Magazine for July, 1819. It is conceived 
without much sense for the new medium, in the fashion of an etch- 
ing. Otis, who is better known as a portrait painter, was born in 
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1784 and died in Philadelphia in 
1861. 


Wer ae a 


REMBRANDT PEALE, N.A. 


Tue portrait painter, Rembrandt Peale, made several excellent 
lithographs, of which his celebrated “‘Porthole” Washington is the 
most famous. Better, however, is the larger oval lithograph of 
Washington here reproduced. It uses skillfully the full gamut of 
velvety blacks and . 
pearly grays which are 
proper to the litho- 
graphic stone. Such 
work was a mere epi- 
sode of Rembrandt 
Peale’s long and versa- 


tile career as a portrait 405, From Rembrandt Peale's lithograph, | 1856, 
s = 4 after his oil portrait o ashington, in the Metro- 

and historical pater politan Museum of Art, New York 

(Nos. 39, 53). 


HENRY INMAN, N.A. 


Tuat clever and experimental painter Henry Inman naturally 
applied lithography to more complicated problems of reproduc- 
tion. His little print of his own wife after Thomas Sully’s paint- 
ing is one of the best sheets of its time. Using all the tender grada- 
tions of the inked stone, Inman has sacrificed nothing of the 
alertness of his original. One might have expected work of this 
quality to compete formidably with the popular steel engraving, 

but the fashion was too strongly set to be easily changed, and 
40 From Inman's lithograph, 1831, afver “Thomas lithography was long regarded either as a curiosity or as a con- 

Museum of Art, New York — ' venience for commercial reproduction. 


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REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 243 


ALBERT NEWSAM 

OccasIoNALLy, however, a professional lithographer of good 
quality emerges. Such was the deaf-mute, Albert Newsam, 
who was born at Steubenville, Ohio, in 1809 and died near 
Wilmington, Delaware, in 1864. He was early associated 
with George Catlin, writer and illustrator of books on the 
Indians, but found his vocation as a portrait lithographer for 
Childs and Inman of Philadelphia. His portrait of William 
Rawle after Inman is an admirable example of vigorous 
draftsmanship with the lithographic crayon. It should be 
noted that Newsam made no endeavor to copy the surfaces 
of the painting, but transcribed them freely in forms proper 
to the chalk. Like most lithographs of the time this bears the 
name of the draftsman, whose work consisted in making 
the drawing on the stone, and also the name of the commer- 
cial firm, Childs and Inman, which did the actual printing. 
This was the usual division of labor. 


JOHN WILLIAM HILL, A.N.A. 
In the field of topography, landscape and town-view, lithog- 


raphy flourished mightily, promptly driving out aquatint. 


It was a poor American village that did not have its bird’s-eye 
view to hang in the hotel, the barber shop, and the office of 
the justice of the peace. New public buildings inspired the 


lithographer, as did parades, balls, famous ships and the new 


OMELET E 


Cs 


407 From the lithograph, 1832, after Inman’s oil por- 
Lae of William Rawle, in the New York Public Li- 
rary 


railroad trains. Such work, though invaluable for the antiquarian, has generally no artistic merit. The 
reader, having seen much of it in the other volumes of this history, will be satisfied with a bare mention here. 
Among these big commercial sheets a diligent search will reveal a few of fair quality. Hardly more than this 
can be said of John W. Hill’s view of Rockland Lake, here reproduced. Hill was born in England in 1812 
and died in 1897, having practiced many kinds of reproductive mediums. His touch has a certain delicacy 
and feeling, but not much strength. Currier & Ives of New York were the most active publishers of this 
type of work. Their sheets are freely used in our other volumes (Vol. III, Nos. 176-77, 246, 260, 394). 


408 From the lithograph Rockland Lake by John W. Hill in the New York Public Library 


244 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


FELIX OCTAVIUS CARR 
DARLEY, N.A. 


For his albums of outlines after 
American authors, the famous illus- 
trator, Felix O. C. Darley, employed 
lithography very successfully. His 
plates after Washington Irving’s Rip 
Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy 
Hollow and after Judd’s Margaret are 
among the best things of the sort 
that the century produced anywhere. 
Probably the engraved outlines of 
Flaxman were the inspiration, but 
Darley showed discretion in choosing 
a medium which did not put his nerv- 
ous and expressive line at the mercy 
of a copyist. 

Such are the few flickers of inven- 
tion at the beginnings of a process the 
future of which was to be chiefly commercial. Here the progress was steady and the story one of expansion. 
Such facsimiles as Louis Prang made in 1884 for the catalogue of the Walters porcelains are marvels of fine 
craftsmanship, as are the facsimiles of the Heber Bishop collection of jades made in 1906 by the Forbes Com- 
pany. All along, the color illustration of scientific books has enlisted a high grade of lithography. In short, 
from the Christmas card to the membership certificate, wherever color has been wanted, lithography has 
served the turn, and even now holds its own with the handier photomechanical color printing. As an art it 
becomes important when good artists design not for but in it. The development of painter-lithography in our 
own times will be considered in its place. . 


gis at, SM, od, <——e ) 
= Sa TM a, A, we, 


409 From the lithograph The Headless Horseman for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 
New York, 1849 


WOOD ENGRAVING — ALEXANDER ANDERSON, N.A. 


Tur history of wood engraving in America is so closely bound up with that of illustration that it might well be 
treated under that head; but since in illustration the interest 
falls rather on the designer than on his engraver, it will be 
well to make a brief survey covering the general development 
and those wood engravers who represent it or made it. The 
black-line cuts whether in wood or type metal of about 1800 
are of no artistic interest. A better practice begins when 
Dr. Alexander Anderson, who had experimented in copper- 
plate engraving about 1820, thoughtfully studied the white- 
line cuts of Thomas Bewick, and began to imitate them. He 
was born in New York in 1775 and lived to an age remarkable 
even for an engraver, dying in Jersey City, in 1870. His 
hundreds of charming little vignettes and illustrations are 
scattered through tradesmen’s cards, obscure books, religious 
tracts and the early annuals. A very skillful engraver, he 
had little capacity for design, and frequently fell back on 
English originals. In his maturity he did two framing prints, 
the Boar Hunt after Ridinger, and Water Fowl after David 
Teniers. The latter is dated 1818 and shows a most resolute 
and understanding use of the white line. It is also very 
delicate in its indications of growing things and in its precise 
registration of distances. It is in many ways a pity that the 
white-line men of the 1870’s failed to follow Anderson’s ex- 
ample of boldness and breadth. His work has a typographical [== : _ 

410 From the white-line wood engraving, 1818, by Alex- 


n i 1 cS. ander Anderson after the painting Water Fowl, by David 
fit ra that theirs entirely lacks Teniers in Linton, Masters of Wood Engraving, 1889 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 245 


ANDERSON’S INFLUENCE 


On the whole, white line made only a humble place for itself 
and by 1850 it was quite displaced by black line. We reproduce 
one of Anderson’s latest blocks in order to represent his more 
delicate manner. It is the title-page of a very popular miscel- 
lany. Anderson’s influence may also be traced through the 
frontispieces and cover designs of tracts and in the minor illus- 
trations of such early magazines as Godey’s and Graham’s. 
Generally the engraving is better than the design. Such minor 
illustration and book ornamentation, while entirely unpreten- z 
tious, was suitable for its modest purpose, and really much v. FAREWELL 
better than our work of the same sort to-day. : 2 


411 From the white-line wood engraving, 1840, in 
Anderson, Wood Hngraving, Scrap Book VI, in the 
New York Public Library 


mt JOSEPH ALEXANDER 

2 ADAMS, A.N.A. 

PROBABLY white line died young because of 
its difficulty. It threw upon the wood en- 
graver the duty of interpretation. He had 
to invent strokes to create tones quite other- 
wise expressed in his original, whereas the 
woodcutter in black line might and generally 
did copy his original line for line. That was a job for a dull and mechanical talent, and such was the character 
of many of its practitioners. A little above the average of black-line wood engraving before the Civil War are 
Joseph A. Adams’ after J. G. Chapman for Harper’s [lum- 
nated Bible. Adams’ touch is vigorous but heavy, and his 
cuts are coarse and emphatic without being really effective. 
Adams was born in 1803 and died in 1880. He was largely 
self-taught. Adams’ engraving is an example of the type 
of work that satisfied popular taste in the middle of the 
nineteenth century. 


HORACE BAKER 


Mucu of the work of this period is anonymous, frequently 
the product of commercial firms. Occasionally one finds a 
clever or graceful print. Such is the case with those which 
Horace Baker (1835-1918) cut in 1852, after Hammatt 
Billings’ designs for Hawthorne’s A Wonder-Book for Girls 
and Boys. But the investigator of our wood engraving of 
the eighteen forties and ’fifties has generally to accept small 
rewards for his pains. In this latter decade started several 
illustrated weeklies of large circulation for the times — 
Gleason’s, Frank Leslie’s, and Harper’s. These greatly en- 
larged the demand for wood engraving, and especially for 
large prints, but good woodcutters were not forthcoming, 435 rom the wood engraving Three Golden Apples, after 


; = design by Hammatt Billings in Hawthorne, A Wonder 
and the new product remained on a commercial level. Book for Girls and Boys, Boston, 1852 


PENSE AIA 


aoe 


so Xe ” reeeier 


412 From the wood engraving Casting the Male Children into the Nile, after the 
drawing by J. G. Chapman in The Illuminated Bible, New York, 1846 


246 ‘THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


GLEASON’S 
PICTORIAL 


Tue intention of mid- 
nineteenth-century wood 
engraving was informa- 
tional rather than artistic. 
The woodcut of Sutter’s 
Mill, A View of Coloma, 
California, which shows 
where James W. Marshall 
made his discovery of gold, 
is thoroughly characteris- 
tic of the sort, but of better 
than the average quality. 
The same volume contains 
a woodcut of the ornate 
silver service which the 
grateful artists of America 
presented to Editor Glea- 
son in recognition of his services to art. In hindsight it may seem that he hardly deserved the compliment, 
but at least he had paid his artists more handsomely than any previous editor. His publication will always 
be a source — almost the only one — for pictorial news of American events, of the eighteen forties and. 
early ’fifties. 


Cp ileete 
ne % ica 
COHEN 


414 From the wood engraving Sutter’s Mill, A View of Coloma, California in Gleason's Pictorial, Nov. 6, 1852 


HARPER'S WEEKLY 


Harper's Werexzy, which started in 1857, about the time when Gleason’s Pictorial died, did not better matters 
much artistically. One may assume that it put its best foot forward when, on October 23, 1858, it illustrated 
Professor J. Russell Lowell’s new poem The Courtin’. The nameless wood engraver has caught much of the 
spirit of Augustus Hoppin’s jovial and scratchy pen drawing, but has marred the effect by very mechanical 
treatment of the darks. It will be interesting to bear this cut in mind when we see the much better wood 
engraving used for Harper’s Weekly twenty years later. 


; 


b 
A) 


415 From the wood engraving ‘‘ An’ all I know ts, they wuz cried in meetin’ come nex’ Sunday,” after a drawing by 5 
Augustus Hoppin in Harper's Weekly, Oct. 23, 1858 . 


247 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 


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OIF 


248 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Che Worson aud the Ahine. 


JULY. 
Newburull ON THE Ilupson. 


the summer more 
pleasantly than in the 
fragrant silence of a 
garden whenee have 
emanated the most 
ane practical and poetic 
toward 
the greater dignity, 


suggestions 


comfort and elegance 


; of country life? Ifthe aspect of our 
SEY $ landscape yearly improves, in the 
‘7"e\ beauty of the houses, and in tasteful and 
7 \ picturesque rural treatment, our enjoyment 


of it will be an obligation to Mr. Downing. 


418 From the wood engraving after the drawing by J. F. Kensett, in 
Curtis, Lotus-Eating, New York, 1852 


JOHN WILLIAM ORR 


In the same year as the Sketch Book, 
appeared George William Curtis’ Lotus- 
Eating with ornaments cut by J. W. Orr, 
who had cut many of the best blocks in 
The Sketch Book of 1852. The little 
initial W which we reproduce may seem 
a trifle, but it is no trifle to make a few 
thin lines tell the story of great spaces. 
This is one of the earlier examples of a 
rustic sort of book ornamentation which 
was to be freely used for the next twenty- 
five years, and sometimes abused. John 
William Orr was born in Ireland in 1815 
and trained under Redfield in New York, 
where he died in 1887. He was associated 
with the Harpers and cut the frontis- 
pieces for their Illustrated Shakespeare. 
Orr did a large amount of commercial 
work, employed competent foreign-born 
engravers, and ‘his establishment was for 
years the leading one in this country. 
He was himself one of the best wood 
engravers of his time. 


P. F. ANNIN 
SoMEwHuat retarded by the Civil War, 
the reform gradually made its way. In 
1864, the Putnams, we have noted, un- 


der Richardson’s supervision, published 
the ‘‘Artists’ Edition” of The Sketch 
Book. After seventy years and more, 
it remains the finest illustrated book 


2s 4 s an 8 ? 
rahe ¥,- My 
i Lyf DARN S 


' from purely American resources, and 


it compares very favorably with the 


splendid illustrated editions of Long- 


fellow and Poe which the famous 


Brothers Dalziel were preparing in 


England about the same time. In 


1865, Ticknor & Fields, at Boston, 


published a charming little edition of 


Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, employing 


two of our greatest imaginative paint- 


ers, La Farge and Vedder, as illustra- 


tors, and P. F. Annin as engraver. It 


was the precursor of those admirable 


little illustrated books of poetry which 


the successors of these publishers were 


to publish through the eighteen 


seventies under the direction of the 
able wood engraver, A. V.S. Anthony, 
who did some of the wood cutting ; 
for Annin in the Enoch Arden. e190 


From the wood engraving after the drawing The Island Home 


by John La Farge, in Tennyson, Enoch Arden, Boston, 1865 


a = 


ee ee Le 


eye te” 


Se ee ee ee ale de a ee 


{ REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 249 


il 

" 

s COMMERCIAL WOOD 
% ENGRAVING 


To abridge our story, by 1870 
good wood engraving was the 
rule in book illustration, and it 
was slowly making its way in 
the magazines. An illustration 
chosen almost casually from 
Harper's Weekly shows the 
notable progress that had been 
made even in the commercial 
production. It renders ad- 
mirably a fine drawing by 
Winslow Homer, with such full 
pictorial effect that it could well 
be used as a framing print. 
Such skill had now become so 
common that the wood engraver 
did not always take the trouble 


a 420 From the wood engraving after the drawing Spring Farm Work — Grafting 
to sign the block. by Winslow Homer, in Harper’s Weekly, April 30, 1870 


THE CLIMAX OF BLACK-LINE WOOD ENGRAVING 


Tue culmination of the old black-line method was reached in the woodcuts of Picturesque America, 1872. That 
the illustrations too often overran the text confusingly was no fault of the engravers. It was the fashion of 
the times. Generally the wood engravers had ex- 
cellent originals by the best landscape painters of 
the moment, as Kensett, Harry Fenn, Thomas 
Moran, J. D. Smillie; and such woodcutters as 
Filmer, W. J. Linton, J. H. E. Whitney and others 
brought an extraordinary dash, picturesqueness 
and fidelity to their task. Indeed, these woodcut 
copies are so much more salient throughout than 
the original work of these painters that one must 
concede to the wood engravers a creative part in 
the effect. The boldness of the method, its rich 
blacks and flashing whites, seem to many the high 
point of reproductive wood engraving in America, 
as more idiomatic and proper to the medium than 
the more delicate and famous white-line wood en- 
gravings which were soon to follow. From the 
early eighteen seventies there had been a substan- 
tial aid from photography. It was no longer 
necessary to draw the design on the block, destroy- 
ing it piecemeal as the cutting proceeded. The 
drawing could now be made on any scale and 
transferred photographically to the wood, the 
engraver keeping the original in sight as he worked. 
Such a procedure was as indispensable to the mak- 
ing of the fine blocks for Picturesque America as it 
was later for the new white-line work. In this 
work the old style of wood engraving reached its 
height; it was inevitable that it should be super- 
seded by something new. 


ANN Ss 13588 4 


421 From the wood engraving by John Filmer after the painting 
fant Caition by J. D. Smillie, in Picturesque America, New York, 


250 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


FREDERICK JUENGLING 


Every observant reader will have noticed a free use 
of the white line in the last five or six cuts. Not till 
1877, however, did the auxiliary become the main 
device. The credit for the discovery is disputed, 
but it is certain that Frederick Juengling was the 
earliest to practice it consistently, and the most 
audacious in its application. The new method rested 
on the faith that there was a right combination of 
white lines, flicks or dots to suggest every conceiv- 
able color or texture. It was evoked by the quality 
of the painting of the moment — the new-school men 
were chiefly interpreters of painting of the moment 
— which bestowed an interest, probably an undue 
interest, upon textures unparalleled since the little 
masters of Holland. In the print after Whistler’s 
self-portrait by Juengling which we reproduce, one 
may even follow the broad brush-strokes of the origi- 
nal painting. Juengling was born in New York city 
in 1846 and died there in 1889. He received honor- 
able mention at the Salon for his wood engraving. 


422 From the white-line wood engraving after Whistler’s 
self-portrait for L’ Art, 1877 


J. H. E. WHITNEY 


Tr is well to recall that white-line work of this mastery implies a 
preliminary mastery of the black-line, and some of the triumphs 
of the new men are still in the old manner. Thus J. H. E. Whitney 
did nothing more skillful than his copy of Whistler’s etching Jo, 
in which the wood engraver not only followed the most intricate web 
of lines faithfully but also simulated the very characteristic 
look of dry-point. It should be evident that such a four de 
force of reproduc- 
tion imposes an 
unfruitful effort on. 
the wood engraver 
—an effort, how- 
ever, that makes 
for facility and vir- 
tuosity. Many 
orthodox workers 
in wood protested 
against this per- 
verted, thoroughly 
superfluous expan- 
sion of their art. 


423 From the wood engraving after the dry-point 
M’N. Whi 


etching Jo by James A istler, in The 


Century Magazine, Aug. 1879 


HENRY MARSH 


AGAIN Henry Marsh’s black-line print after a pen drawing 
by Roger Riordan of an Etruscan fan shows in one of the new 
men an extraordinary virtuosity in the old manner. Upon 
such hard-won skill the triumphs of the new school rested. As 
craftsmen these men admitted no impossibilities. 


Sept. 1877 


te) 
QR 


REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING 


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XiI—17 


252 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


From the white-line wood engraving after the painting The Hay Wain by John Constable. © The Century Co. 


TIMOTHY COLE, N.A. 

Prruaps the most completely accomplished of the men of the new school is Timothy Cole. His peculiar talent 
early won him a place apart, with tranquillity to travel and make his marvelous transcripts after the old 
masters at his ease. He was about the only one of his fellows who was not under journalistic conditions, and 
his carefully pondered work shows the advantages of such freedom. In vigorous old age he keeps the white-line 
method alive a score of years after it has passed out of common use. We might safely represent him at random 
by any print from his albums of Dutch, Italian, Spanish or English old masters, but we choose instead with 
some care a sheet which seems to exemplify all the merits of the artist and of the method. It is broad, it does 
not sacrifice the rich blacks, it retains the untroubled lights, it does not too much conceal the constructive lines 
in tone; finally it conveys the joyous immediacy of Constable’s mood. ‘Timothy Cole, the last survivor of the 
great white-line wood engravers, was born in London, England, in 1852. He came up through struggle in the 
United States and made himself the most resourceful of craftsmen. Much of his work has been given to 
the interpretation of the great painters of Europe and he has added to the work of his burin enlightening lit- 
erary comment. He is still active in Poughkeepsie, New York. 

About the time white line began, the photomechanical relief block processes were being improved. ‘They 
provided, to be sure with some artistic defects, a real facsimile of any sort of a graphic original, and at very 
small cost. So one may say that white line had the bad luck to be born under a dispensation of infant damna- 
tion, and its twenty years of life, somewhat under artificial conditions of encouragement, must be regarded as 
a respite from an inevitable doom. Before the end of the century it was hard pressed by process, to which it 
virtually yielded the reproductive field before 1910. We have considered the most prominent practitioners 
in this technical survey and we shall study others incidentally under illustration. In retrospect, the school 
seems less American than it claimed to be. Many of the best men, Cole, Wolf, Kruell, for example, were 
foreign-born. For original design in America the school did little, copying generally European masterpieces. 
For American illustration it did even less, the work being regarded as too precious for such ephemeral use. 
Technically, this was the most skillful wood engraving America has produced, but I feel it hardly deserves its 
proud title of the American School. That term, for every historical and topical reason, were better reserved 
for the black-line men from 1860 on. They greatly encouraged original design in America, and they divulged 
it with sufficient fidelity in an idiom proper to the wood block, if not with the magical legerdemain of their 
more famous successors. 


Se ee ae! ee ee 


ee nee Set Ly ae TE yes 


GHA‘PT EK Ree xs 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 


HE painter-engraver engraves his own design, and the design itself is made in 
view of the eventual engraving. Thus Rembrandt Peale’s lithograph of his 
“Porthole’’ Washington and William Marshall’s line engraving of his own por- 

trait of Lincoln are not, strictly speaking, painter-engravings, because, though we have 
in each gase the artist engraving his own design, the design was not made to be engraved. 
Indeed, the ideal painter-engraving would be worked directly on the copperplate, stone 
or wood block — thought out in the material itself without preparations in other media. 
Many painter-engravings are thus made. When that is impracticable, at least the pre- 
paratory studies should be made with the engraving always in mind. 

Painter-etching and painter-lithography arose almost simultaneously in France and 
England in the eighteen fifties or a little earlier. The expatriate American, James Abbott 
McNeill Whistler, fell in with the new movement and became the greatest etcher and 
lithographer of his generation. But his influence hardly reached America till the late 
“seventies, where it merely reinforced a native movement toward painter-etching. 
Painter-lithography though sporadically practiced in America from the late ’sixties has 
come into its own only in the present century. Painter-wood engraving was occasionally 
essayed by the white-line school of the ’eighties, but their work was on the whole repro- 
ductive, and the creative use of the wood block has not been common until the last fifteen 
years. In all these developments we have lingered behind England and Continental 
Europe, whereas in photomechanical engraving we have been innovators. In etching 
the lines are “bitten”’ into the copper plate by acid. Ordinarily the entire plate is 
coated, “grounded,” with an acid-resisting substance through which the design is 
scratched with a needle, the metal being exposed wherever the needle touches it. The 
plate is now “bitten” by a bath of acid; this eats into the exposed lines. When 
the lightest lines are sufficiently bitten, the plate is removed from the bath, washed, and the 
lightest lines “stopped out” with an acid-resisting varnish. The plate is now rebitten, 
the acid sparing the stopped-out lines, but deepening all the others. When the next to 
the lightest lines are found to be right, they in turn are stopped out, and the bitings 
are similarly continued until the deepest lines are made. Biting is a very delicate process 
and there are many ways of handling it beside the merely typical procedure here described. 
The etched line, as compared with the burin line, is rich and unmechanical partly owing 
to inequalities in the action of the acid, partly owing to the character of the line itself 
which, having the section of a pocket, holds much ink. Mechanically the printing is 
done as in line engraving, but there are many special refinements. For example, by 
simply varying the amount and distribution of ink left on the face of the plate every 
print would be different, as is actually the case with the late Whistlers. 


253 


254 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Dry-point, though a form of line engraving, is associated with etching. The dry-point 
is simply a strong steel needle used like a pencil on the copper. The lightly scratched 
line has a roughness, “burr,” on one side, which holds the ink and produces a rich and 
picturesque black line. The burr soon wears down in printing and very few good im- 
pressions can be made from a dry-pointed plate. Dry-point is often used as a method 
of adding to plates etched with acid very fine lines and velvety blacks. 

Soft ground etchings resemble pencil or crayon drawings and are done as follows: 
The copper is covered with a greasy ground upon which tissue paper is laid. On this 
tissue the drawing is executed with a pencil or similar point and the tissue is pulled away. 
It brings with it the ground over the lines, exposing the copper where the pencil has passed. 
The plate is then bitten with acid, and is ready for printing. 

Lithography is based on the antagonism of grease and water. A design is drawn 
upon a stone having an equal affinity for both with crayon partly composed of grease 
which the stone absorbs. The stone is then moistened with water, so that when ink 
mixed with grease is applied with a roller, the wet (blank) part resists the ink and the 
part made greasy with the crayon readily accepts it. The design on the inked stone is 
now transferred to paper under the press. Or the design may be made on special paper 
which transfers the greasy drawing to the stone. When the design is made with brush 
and greasy ink, the print has the effect of a wash-drawing. These are called lithotints. 
Colored lithographs, called chromolithographs, employ colored inks and a separate stone 
for each hue and tint. Some of the most elaborate chromolithographs have required 
from twenty to thirty stones. The method, while admirable for facsimiles, is not adapted 
to artistic ends, and most of the best painter-lithographs either use color sparingly or not 
at all. 

Painter-lithography was never boomed among us; hence its development has been 
gradual and normal. In a narrow sense, some of the topographical lithographs which 
were made abundantly from 1830 to 1860 may be regarded as painter-lithographs, since 
they were drawn for and on the stone by the artist, but their quality is not such as to 
detain us. Certain early illustrations have technically the same standing. But such 
precursors show little sense of the resources of the medium. It remained for the Boston 
painter, William M. Hunt, to employ the silvery half tones and resonant blacks which 
are proper to lithography, and the handful of little figure subjects which he did toward 
1870 set a standard which has not been greatly surpassed. A few other artists experi- 
mented with the lithographic crayon at this period, without notable results until in 1878 
Whistler turned his versatility toward the stone. His finesse in the distribution of tones 
brought him immediate mastery. In portraiture, in sketches of the nude or lightly draped 
figure, in scenes of street, park and river, he produced marvels of delicacy and discretion. 
A few of his lithographs were published in art magazines through the eighteen nineties 
and thus became available as models, but most of them were buried promptly in the 
portfolios of discriminating amateurs and were not widely available till the memorial 
exhibition of 1904, from about which time dates our revival of painter-lithography. 

The way had been prepared for it somewhat earlier in the cult of the artistic poster 
in the last years of the nineteenth century. It carried with it an improvement of the 
design of magazine covers and dust-covers for books, and in the advertising poster. 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 255 


It was natural that the highly trained wood engravers of our white-line school should 
find relief from copying in working from their own designs. Elbridge Kingsley did so 
frequently, driving his studio van to beautiful spots in New England and sketching with 
the burin on the boxwood. W. B. P. Closson, Henry Wolf and Frank French occasionally 
executed their own designs, while the carefully studied composite portraiture of Gustav 
Kruell, the exemplar being his own, may also be reckoned to painter-wood engraving. 

But the real revival of the art waited for the new century and the complete victory of 
process engraving. Relieved from the task of copying, the woodcut was to become a 
means of personal expression. It passed into new hands with quite other ideals than 
those of the old white-line men. Instead of their silvery tones, the velvety blacks of 
thick lines and of carefully placed spots were preferred. This was a renewal of the 
methods of the first woodcutters, and like them the new men often worked with a knife 
on the side of the block. Indeed, in the search for an even more tractable material 
linoleum was often substituted for wood. The boldness of the new black-line style had 
its precedents not only in early book illustration but also in the recent revival of the 
manner in England by William Morris and his numerous successors in fine printing. 

But the new black-line men were only exceptionally illustrators. Half-tone was too 
cheap. At the beginning of our revival of the old woodcut manner of illustration, Howard 
Pyle’s illustrations were reproduced in half-tone, and so were Rockwell Kent’s only 
recently. Most of the new men did separate sheets for collectors’ portfolios. For the 
first time in its history the woodcut became a precious object of limited circulation. 
Had the energy and ability of the new movement been devoted to a simpler and more 
typographical form of illustration, a considerable improvement in our public taste might 
have resulted. But our social, esthetic and economic conditions forbade such a benefit, 
and the rapid decline of American illustration continued unchecked. The new wood- 
block men remained privileged outsiders, in a manner amateurs. Many indeed were 
only incidentally wood engravers, being chiefly painters or etchers. 

This isolation has its advantages and disadvantages. It gave much of the work an 
uncentral and unrepresentative character; it also left it very free for experimentation. 
Thus alongside the standard blocks in Renaissance style we find exquisite adaptations 
of the old chiaroscuro manner, a flat tone being added to the design from a separate block. 
Here Rudolph Ruzicka is the leading figure. And we have also from Arthur Dow, 
Helen Hyde, and Florence W. Ivins a skillful assimilation of the refinements of Japanese 
color printing, the effects being obtained, somewhat after the fashion of color lithog- 
raphy, by printing from several blocks. 

The merits of the revival and the styles of its chief practitioners may be studied in 
our illustrations. A somewhat exotic character in the work is the price the fine artist 
must pay for living in an age which, generally speaking, is insensitive to careful design. 
He is thrown back too much on himself. However, the movement is very much alive 
and full of promise. It may yet serve as a rallying-point for all who value economy and 
lucidity in the graphic arts. It is the David who is alone opposing the utilitarian Goliath 
of half-tone and rotogravure. 


256 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


MARY NIMMO MORAN 


In point of time, Whistler was the first, as he was by 
far the most famous, of American painter-etchers. 
His earliest plates are of 1855. But his beautiful 
prints were virtually unknown in America before 
about 1880, and our native school grew up without 
his influence. It was part of the general forward 
movement of the late eighteen eighties, and, like the 
best American painting and sculpture of the moment, 
it owed much to France. One may safely guess that 
most of our pioneer etchers had studied carefully 
such accomplished French etchers as Jacques, 
Daubigny, Appian and Lalanne, all of whom were 
accessible in art magazines, and in Philip G. Hamer- 
ton’s very popular book, Etching and Etchers, 1866. 
Some consulted the bolder and more summary 
methods of Seymour Haden. Under such excellent 
guidance, American etching came quickly to a kind 
of technical maturity, perhaps too quickly, for the 
painters and engravers who suddenly became etchers 
had no more to say in the new method than they had 
said in the old. So the whole early movement, im- 
portant enough for the history of taste, is respectable 
rather than thrilling. It will be enough, then, to cite 
a few characteristic figures. One of the best is Mary 
Nimmo Moran, whose intimate glimpses of settled 
eastern scenery are an interesting foil for the grandi- 
428 From the etching Summer, Suffolk County, N. Y., in the ose western panoramas of her painter husband, 

bien emgeenla Paoeee te woe 2 Thomas Moran (No. 74). She had a rich sense for 
the picturesque and manipulated the copper audaciously for depth of tone. Indeed, this woman had more 
robustness both as designer and executant than most of her male rivals, as witness this vigorous rendering 
of scrub pines of Long Island. 


STEPHEN PARRISH 


SrepHEN PARRISH, who was born at Philadelphia in 1846, and self-trained as an etcher, prefers full pictorial 
effects. Perhaps his best-known plate is Trenton, Winter. On the old house and boats the work is very 
minute, but the dark passages keep a luminosity which ties them in with the great area of white. A snow 
scene, forty odd years ago, 
was an innovation. Par- 
rish has lived to see the 
theme become standard, 
but he can have few snow 
scenes that convey more 
of the quiet bitterness of 
winter than this early 
effort of his own. Unlike 
the run of painter-etchers, 
who are primarily sketch- 
ers, Parrish has always 
preferred somewhat elab- 
orated pictorial effects 
with the composition well 
thought out. His is the 
etching of a reflective 
nature. 429 From the etching 7'renton, Winter, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 257 


J. H. HILL 


TuE new etchers were not too 
strong on the broad principles 
of the art, being inclined, 
partly under the influence of 
the then popular reproduc- 
tive etching, to make their 
plates too pictorial; but they 
were very curious and ingen- 
ious in all matters of minor 
technique. For example, J. H. 
Hill, the grandson of the father 
of aquatint in America, effec- 
tively revived the ancestral 
art in Moonlight on the Andros- 
coggin. Here the mixture of 
methods seems right enough. 
To have suggested the broken moonlit sky with the etched line would have been, even if possible, immensely 
difficult and laborious. 


a8 gf : Es hace 2 


is ae ? Se BS ‘ Zs ap tie 
430 From the aquatinted etching Moonlight on the Androscoggin in the American Art Rev 


iew, 1880 


JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER 


WuisT Ler, whose life has been briefly treated under painting (Nos. 103-07), announced himself modestly as 
an etcher, when, in 1858, he published the twelve prints of his now famous “French Set,” at a little more 
than a dollar apiece. It was youthful work of extraordinary charm, accomplishment and versatility. The 
young American was already master in architectural subjects, street scenes, portraiture and familiar genre. 
There never was a more convincing diploma piece than the “‘French Set,” but it took the world more than 
twenty years to find it out. One may regret that Whistler almost never returned to that vein of genre which 
is so delightful in the cover of the set, as in the Marchande de Moutarde and La Vielle aux Loques. Passing 
to London, Whistler worked through the eighteen sixties and a little later on those extraordinary visions of 
the Thames at London which were eventually collected into the ““Thames Set.” The mood has now some- 
what changed, partly under the influence of young Whistler’s painter friend, the realist Courbet. The work 
is no longer charming, but amazingly intelligent and veracious. If one studies the work on Black Lion Wharf, 
1859, he will note that, while it is very elaborate, it is never literal. The etcher never thinks of houses and 
boats in terms of bricks and 
boards but in terms of the 
characteristic appearance of 
the whole mass. He works 
always in formulas which, 
however complicated, are al- 
ways ingenious, persuasive 
and large in effect. That work 
of this highly intellectualized 
sort was achieved in the 
open air before the object is 
striking testimony to Whist- 
ler’s intellectual greatness. 
That London should not have 
acclaimed this admirable cel- 
ebration of her own pictur- 
esqueness remains a mystery. 
The work was straightforward 
and legible, and could have 
been understood by the very 
dock hands who appear in it. 


431 From the etching Black Lion Wharf in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


. 


258 


432 From the dry point Weary in the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York 


it cost the artist infinite pains. 
A first plate of the subject was 
destroyed. When the Venetian 
prints were exhibited at London, 
the critics rejected them as too 
slight, but a few artists and 
discerning collectors saw their 
value. They were influential 
upon a group of young American 
painters at Venice with whom 
Whistler fraternized—Frank 
Duveneck and his pupils — and 
now and again they captivated 
an eager young art student in 
America. Wherever they were 
understood, a more idiomatic 
manner of etching appeared. 
Whistler himself had turned to 
lithography with characteristic 
volatility. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


A WHISTLER DRY-POINT 


OnE afternoon in 1865 Whistler’s beautiful model “Jo,” 
wearied from posing or housework, let down her red 
hair and cast herself into a deep chair for rest. Caught 
by the beauty of the pose, the artist seized a copperplate 
and, without taking the pains to burnish out the faintly 
drawn face of a child, turned the plate upside down and 
with a few strokes of the dry point achieved within half an 
hour what is one of the loveliest prints in the world. Its 
economy is complete. There is just enough work to ex- 
press the relaxation of the noble long body and the 
apathetic turn of the splendid head. No stroke could be 
spared, and none could be added. It is a masterpiece of 
choice seeing and feeling, and of fastidious design. 

To one of the latest of the “‘Thames Set,” The Adam 
and Eve Tavern, was affixed the new butterfly signature, 
symbol of a coming evanescence in the art. The print no 
longer shows the severity of its precursors. The line is 
light and fluent, frequently broken, suggesting atmosphere 
as well as form. It is the moment of the early nocturnes. 
From 1870, for seven or eight years, Whistler’s attention 
to etching was largely suspended, and the promise of the 
Adam and Eve was not completely fulfilled until Whistler’s 
bankruptcy and consequent visit to Venice in 1879. 


THE VENETIAN ETCHINGS 


Wuisrier sketched many aspects of Venice on the copper, her pattern of domes and towers from the lagoon, 
her crowded piazzas, but he took most pleasure in finding little bits that were his own. The touch is now 
extraordinarily light, the line is short and brittle, the needle rather paints than draws, air moves about the 
design. Very characteristic is the print representing the tunnel leading to a gondola ferry, perhaps the very 
finest. outdoor print of all time. It looks as if it had been sketched off rapidly. As a matter of fact, 


433 


From the etching The Traghetto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ‘ 


“ 


TE aS ee ee ee ee ee ei, EDS PORE ey 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 259 


434 From the etching The Oblong Riva, courtesy of the Cincinnati Museum Association, Cincinnati 


FRANK DUVENECK, N.A., S.A.A. 


Frank Duveneck, whose life is elsewhere outlined (No. 143), was at Venice with his painting class during 
Whistler’s stay. He was already a finished painter with European honors and a considerable group of the 
most promising of the younger painters had acclaimed him “Master.” He had the flexibility to learn that 
etching is not a casual way of picture making, but an art with its own laws and limitations. His etchings 


have such a superficial resemblance to 
Whistler's that on their exhibition at 
London the wiseacres suspected the un- 
likely name Duveneck to be one more 
mystification of the wily Butterfly. On 
inspection, Duveneck’s etchings are per- 
sonal enough, more robust than Whistler’s 
and more literal, and entirely without 
that glamour with which Whistler’s work 
is always endued. His prints are mostly 
of large size, destined for framing rather 
than for portfolios. 


OTTO H. BACHER, A.N.A., S.A.A. 


One of Duveneck’s best pupils was 
Otto H. Bacher, who tried his hand at 
etching under Whistler’s inspiration and 
really caught more of Whistler’s richness 
than Duveneck. If one could imagine 
Whistler for a moment careless about his 
composition, the plate which we reproduce 
might almost seem a Whistler. With 
much ability, Bacher lacked that ultimate 
gift of taste which distinguishes the good 
from the great artist. He soon gave up 
etching for illustration and painting, and 
in his last years he wrote an amusing book 
on his Venetian experiences with Whistler. 
Bacher was born at Cleveland, Ohio, in 
1856, and died in New York in 1909. 


From the etching Three Ships, Venice, in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


260 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


436 From the etching Buttermilk Channel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


CHARLES ADAMS 
PLATT, N.A. 


WE return to America, 
where, from 1882 or so, 
the etchings of Whistler 
began to be known. In 
1884, the firm of Wunder- 
lich, at New York, ex- 
hibited the Venetian 
prints with the special in- 
stallation which Whistler 
himself had made for 
them in London. Our 
native etching of about 
this time improves, and 
has a less homemade look 
than that of the pioneers. 
One senses the new ease 


in Charles A. Platt’s fine etching, Buttermilk Channel, though any direct influence is rather that of Seymour 
Haden than of Whistler. But it is an art that stands firmly on its own legs, after all — consummate sketching 
with the line. Platt was born at New York in 1861 and trained in the art schools of that city and of Paris. 
Etching was only an episode in his career, and it was a capital misfortune for that art in America when he 


passed on to new triumphs in 
painting and architecture. He still 
returns now and then to his first 
art, but too rarely. 


JOSEPH PENNELL, N.A. 


Amone the early devotees of 
Whistler’s admirable art was a 
young Philadelphian, later to be 
his friend and biographer, Joseph 
Pennell. No one but Whistler 
himself had done a more masterly 
etching than the Ponte Vecchio 
which Pennell signed in 1883. For 
a man of twenty-three it was an 
extraordinary performance, and in 
forty years of practicing every kind 
of etching Mr. Pennell hardly sur- 
passed it. The sound and robust 
tradition of Whistler’s Thames 
prints underlies such work. Like 
them it abounds in careful study of 
detail while keeping the scale and 
dignity of the theme. It is tech- 
nically most skillful, from the 
hazardous deep biting of the blacks 
to the light sweeps of the dry point 
in the sky. It reveals, with a very 
personal sense of place, a singu- 
larly complete technical repertory. 


437 


From the etching Ponte Vecchio in Original Etchings by American Artists, 
New York and London, 1883, in the New York Public Library 


_ PENNELL AN 
INTERPRETER OF THE 
AGE OF MACHINERY 


JosEPH PENNELL was born at 
Philadelphia in 1860 and 
studied at the Pennsylvania 
Academy. He soon passed 
into the illustration of books of 
European travel of which the 
text was frequently written 
by his accomplished wife. 
Of the revival of painter- 
etching and lithography in 
the present century he was 
one of the most distinguished 
figures. He was a member of 
the National Academy and 
received every conceivable 
honor. His books on pen 
drawing, etching and lithog- 
raphy are important contri- 
butions to the lore of those 
respective crafts. He died 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 


261 


438 From the etching Trains that Come and Trains that Go, courtesy of Frederick Keppel & Co. 


in 1926 at New York. Pennell was endowed with a breadth and zest of interest all his own. The year before 
his death he collected into one vividly written volume his experiences of a lifetime, and the widely scat- 
tered etchings with which he had illustrated them. That a man of Pennell’s capacity could not make a living 
by etching tells much about the times. It seems that the whole movement had been overdone and rested too 
much on handbooks and critical encouragement of a more patriotic than discriminating sort. Almost every- 
body etched, but few commanded the idiom of the art. There were many etchings, much puffing of them, and 
few buyers. The print sellers were only half-heartedly enlisted. They kept the native product, which cost 
almost nothing, but they made their profits by selling reproductive etchings and approved prints of Seymour 
Haden, Van Gravesande, Buhot and later of Zorn. So American etching after the first spurt took a rest, 
probably for its good, and became an occasional diversion of the painters. Few of them have resisted the 


_ 439 From the etching Weeds and Mill, Holland, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


temptation to try their hand 
on the copper. 


JOHN H. TWACHTMAN, 
S.A.A. 


Amone the casual etchings 
by painters none are more de- 
lightful than that handful of 
little landscapes etched by 
John Twachtman (Nos. 198- 
99). Such a print as Weeds 
and Mill, Holland, has the 
freshness and simplicity of 
a Jongkind and an even more 
joyous accent. These etch- 
ings, which the artist took no 
account of, were not published 
till after his death. They have 
the lucidity and _ delicate 
strength that marks all of 
Twachtman’s work. 


262 


440 


441 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


From the dry-point Little Portrait No. 1 by J. A. Weir, 
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


a PHVA) “ 


From the etching Busy Hands by 


JULIAN ALDEN WEIR, N.A., P.N.A. 
Tue very thoughtful etchings of Julian Alden Weir 
were merely an incident of his career as a painter, 
and were virtually unpublished, yet this compact 
little group of portraits and figures is a true epitome 
of the artist’s reverent and searching genius, and he 
who is lucky enough to own the rare set may feel 
that he possesses all that is essential of Weir. (See 
also Nos. 200, 237.) 


ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM, N.A., S.A.A. 


Lixs Weir, and unlike the run of etchers, Robert F. 
Blum was a humanist, but his concern was less with 
the individual than with people in groups at play or 
work. He was most accomplished in catching 
characteristic actions, as one may see from Busy 
Hands, and emphasizing the grace in homely deeds. 
Like all sensible craftsmen, Blum studied his great 
predecessors carefully. In this print one divines 
the nervous broken line and general play of light 
that had been brilliantly exemplified in the etchings 
of Fortuny. Blum’s gift for racy genre brings into 
American etching a quality rare at the moment that 
could ill be spared. (See also Nos. 171, 223.) 


Robert F. Blum, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


Pe | 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 263 


MARY CASSATT 


Mary Cassatt has been considered under 
painting (No. 235). Pupil of Degas and 
always resident in Paris, she may be considered 
as America’s most distinguished contribution 
to the French Impressionist school. Her 
work is not merely technically skillful but 
also full of specific character. Her etchings 
begin with an austere and simple drawing, 
but, in order to obtain full pictorial effect, 
often end in complications of devices to secure 
tone on plate which fairly defy analysis. 
Her color prints are quite the most success- 
ful of modern times. The tone of Au Thédtre 
seems to be managed by carefully touching 
the copper with acid (see technical explana- 
tion, page 253). Most of the lines appear to 
be in soft ground and there are dry-point re- 
touches. Miss Cassatt’s prints were usually 
limited to a fastidious and objective sort of 
portraiture in the tradition of her exemplars, 
Manet and Degas. The scene ranges from 
fashionable to familiar. In particular there 
is a delightful series of nurses with children. 


442 From the etching Au Thédire in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
New York, courtesy of Durand-Ruel 


SION LONGLEY WENBAN 


Ston LonetEY WENBAN is another American who went to Europe to study and never found the way back. 
He was born in Cincinnati in 1848 and made his career in Munich where he died in 1897. His big and strongly 
executed plates of town scenes had a marked influence on the German school of etching, which has ever 
welcomed elaboration. In the present instance, a print of 1883, the year of Pennell’s Ponte Vecchio (No. 437), 
we find Wenban anticipating those industrial themes which Pennell was to make more fully his own. 


443 From the etching Munich Railway Yards in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


7 


264 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


npaky ts 


CHARLES F. W. MIELATZ, A.N.A. 


Ovr contemporary etchers may be most conveniently divided __ 
into etchers of city scenes, of landscape and of the figure. The 
fact of the overwhelming preponderance of the practitioners of 
the first of these categories has never been altogether accounted __ 
for. Whether the ablest etchers have an innate penchant 
toward the more volatile tonalities of the city, or whether the 
influence of Pennell is in itself explanation enough, is not 
ascertainable. Whatever the explanation, landscape has 
been relatively neglected by the new etchers, though it hasbeen __ 
the staple of contemporary painting, as it was of the first etchers. 
Figure design is sparsely represented, but its group is perhaps 
the most interesting of all. Charles Mielatz may be regarded 
as the link with Pennell between the old school and the new. 
He was born in Germany in 1864, was a pupil of the Chicago 
School of Design, and died at New York in 1919. With the 
zeal of an antiquarian he explored the nooks and corners of a 
rapidly changing New York and perpetuated with his needle 
much of its vanishing picturesqueness. His limited imagina- 
tion fitted him for the task of faithful transcription, and for 
this reason his prints will be valued long after those of better 
painter-etchers are forgotten. Mielatz, however, had an 
a 1 entirely adequate sense for composition and was immensely 
444 From the otc ng aamund in the Metropolitan inventive in all technical matters. Washington Square, for 
Museum of Art, New York, courtesy of Frederick 5 
Keppel & Co. example, employs almost every conceivable dodge to vary the 
line and secure tone. Such exaggerated ingenuities are of course open to criticism, but they indicate at least 
an alert craftsmanship. Indeed, Mielatz’s prints are quite as interesting to the amateur of technical pro- 


cesses in etching as they are to the antiquarian. 


CHILDE HASSAM, N.A., N.LA.L. 
Or some two hundred and fifty plates of Childe Hassam, about two thirds are devoted to city and village 
scenes in New York and New England. Sharing the enthusiasm of Mielatz for old America, Hassam adds a 
more roving disposition, a more delicate artistry, and a closer observation of effects of light. It would be hard 


a 


a rh Pel 


to choose between the plates made 
at Cos Cob, Connecticut, at East- 
hampton, Long Island, and at 
Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 
All are full of the facts and the 
glamor of quiet elm-lined streets, 
of houses sagging with the years, 
of crumbling wharves and boats 
tugging at their painters in the 
tideway. Hassam’s methods 
vary from sketchy open line to 
elaborate pictorial effects. In 
both moods he is very skillful. 
(See also No. 205.) Among other 
etchers of old America may be 
mentioned Charles Henry White, 
who has made charming sketches 
of old New York and New Orleans, 
and Alice Huger Smith, whose 
delectable province is her native 


Charleston, South Carolina. ae : 
445 From the etching Old Warehouses, Portsmouth, courtesy of Frederick Keppel & Co. 


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pue ‘oyeryedxo ueowoury . 


0D F MOLIVH “HW Ingi1y Jo Asayinoo ‘ArviqryT ONGNd YIOX MIN 
AIOA 


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SYUMHOLA NYadon 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 


448 From the etching Cathedral of Burgos, Spain, courtesy of 


Frederick Keppel & Co. 


ERNEST HASKELL 


Many of our contemporary etchers have occasionally 
made landscapes, but singularly few practice this art 
as a specialty. Among these the most distinguished was 
the late Ernest Haskell. He was born at Woodstock, 
Connecticut, in 1876, and was killed in a motor accident 
near Bath, Maine, in 1925. His austere and scholarly 
work embraced with distinction virtually the entire field 
of the graphic arts, from line engraving to lithography, 
and from the portrait to the bookplate. His variety in 
landscape is extraordinary. There are fanciful little 
plates reminiscent of the conscious arrangements of the 
early Dutch etchers; there are searching and faithful 
studies of cedar-crested cliffs near his seaside home in 
Maine; there are larger prints of the hills and ravines of 
California. He admired especially the branching of old 
trees and drew them with a fidelity unexampled since 
Ruysdael. This print, a gnarled California cedar, well 
represents this strenuous phase of his talent. To gain a 
greater severity, he often retouched the etched line with 
the graver. He was an intelligent student of the old 
masters and a scrupulous craftsman, and his untimely 
death was a sore loss to painter-engraving in America. 
His art was in a peculiar sense one of self-criticism and 
self-discipline — a refreshing exception in a time that has 
gloried in unhampered self-expression. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ERNEST DAVID ROTH, A.N.A. 


Wuuttk Ernest D. Roth often seeks his subjects 
in Italy and Spain, he makes most of his etchings 
here. This work from carefully prepared draw- 
ings has less of the sketch in it than is usual in 
etching, and is more intellectualized. . Discretion 
is a large part of Roth’s art. It has limited his 
popularity somewhat, for the public wishes at 
least the appearance of spontaneity, but it has 
won him respect where that is worth while. His 
print of the Cathedral of Burgos, like everything 
he does, is thoroughly thought out im its subor- 
dination of incidentals to the vision of the great 
Gothic pile. Roth was born at Stuttgart, Ger- 
many, in 1879, and trained by James D. Smillie 
in the National Academy school. He has his 
studio in New York. His early prints from old 
Florentine themes are still perhaps the most 
attractive, though the Spanish series is tech- 
nically superior. Though he devotes himself 


chiefly to architecture, his prints have land- 
scape quality also. 


ay naa by 


From the etching The Head of the Ostrich, 
courtesy of the artist 


a ee 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 


JOHN MARIN 


Joun Marry, one of our ablest contempo- 
rary etchers, has sketched on the copper 
very variously, from elaborate studies of 
French cathedrals to New York sky- 


scrapers seen with the Modernistic distor- 


tions. He is perhaps at his best in the 
intimate subjects of his early days in 
France, one of which is here reproduced. 
It is thoroughly characteristic in masking 
strength of draftsmanship under deli- 
cate workmanship. Some of the more 
effective accents are added with dry 
point. Marin’s baffling versatility has 


told against his success, the public loving 
a standardized product, but his fellow 
artists justly regard him with admiration. 
(See also No. 265.) 


From the dry point Hovering Geese, by 
F. W. Benson, courtesy of Kennedy & Co. 


CHARLES HERBERT 
WOODBURY, N.A. - 


Aw admirable painter of the sea, Charles H. 
Woodbury has also recorded its mass and 
rhythmical motion in a few fine etchings. 
These are executed with succinct, power- 
ful lines which create the space and the 
scene in the most direct fashion. It is 
etching which etchers will most appreciate 


451 


_ for its economy and selectiveness, but 


everybody should easily share the robust 


and keenly observant attitude of a natural 


267 


450 From the etching Moul’ St. Maurice by John Marin, courtesy of E. Weyhe 


FRANK WESTON BENSON, N.A., N.I.A.L. 


To outdoor etching Frank W. Benson has contributed a novelty 
by bringing the sporting print into the realm of art. The inven- 
tion has brought him great popularity and corresponding 
rewards. His numerous studies of wild fowl are those of a 
painter who is also a sportsman, strong and well observed. 
In the dry point shown, the sense of motion, which is the 
first thing felt, is not more remarkable than the sufficient 
indication of an extensive marsh land effected with a few 
well-chosen strokes. Like some other accomplished etchers, 


Benson is equally gifted as a painter of still life and in por- 
(See also Nos. 193, 240.) 


traiture. 


From the etching The Pilot by C. H. Woodbury, courtesy of 
Frederick Keppel & Co. 


452 


sea lover. The print here chosen tells its own story. The drawing of the waves and of the scarcely seen 
liner deserves especial attention. Born at Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1864, Woodbury worked in the schools 


SII—18 


_ of Boston and Paris, and paints chiefly at Ogunquit, Maine. 


268 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ARTHUR ALLEN LEWIS 


Ir is in the spirit of the times that much of our best 
figure design in etching should deal with the life of 
the poor. Here Arthur Allen Lewis is one of our best 
masters. He works with a simple and open line 
which has much expressiveness, quite in the sound 
tradition of Rembrandt. In the little etching, Old 
Woman Reading, there is definite character and quiet 
charm based on sympathy and on understanding 
observation. Lewis was born at Mobile, Alabama, 
in 1873, trained under George Bridgman at Buffalo, 
and Géréme at Paris, and lives in New York. His 
work is distinguished for beautiful drawing executed 
in lines apparently simple and casual, but really 
studied and calculated, as fine work always is. 


. 


453 From the etching Old Woman Reading by A. A. Lewis, in the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, courtesy of the artist 


EUGENE HIGGINS, A.N.A. 

In Eugene Higgins, equally accomplished as painter and 
etcher, sympathy for the poor assumes a more poignant and 
tragic form. He feels their miseries and asserts them with a 
somber emphasis. Wholly characteristic is this most pic- 
turesque little print of a young wife admitting a drunken 
husband at midnight. It is highly dramatic, but nothing is 
overstated. Higgins was born at Kansas City, Missouri, 
in 1874. He was trained in the schools of Paris and works 
in New York. (See also. No. 26).) 


454 From the etching Midnight Duty by Eugene Higgins, 
courtesy of Frederick Keppel & Co. 


JOHN SLOAN 


Poor life in New York is again the theme of 
John Sloan. But here sympathy often takes a 
sardonic turn. He gives us amazing studies of 
peopled tenement roofs, amusing glimpses into 
lighted back windows, whimsical accounts of 
the sociabilities of artist life — all expressed with a tranquil understanding and in an impeccable drafts- 
manship. Occasionally he reverses the mirror and shows us the snobbery and futility of the rich. Nothing 
could be better in a caustic way than the Fifth Avenue Critics. Tt embalms an attitude no longer so completely 
realizable since the limousine and chauffeur have dethroned the barouche and coachman. It is a social docu- 
ment of the first order. Sloan has the gift of investing common themes with the dignity of a personal style 
which is the expression of his own intellectual detachment. (See also Nos. 248, 555.) 


455 From the etching Fifth Avenue Critics by John Sloan, 
courtesy of E. Weyhe 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING 269 


MAHONRI YOUNG, N.A. 
In etching, Mahonri Young’s mood 


isa joyous one. With a few master- 
ful lines he catches the energy of 
children at play, the charm of old 
orchards, the movement of life on 
the great plains. His etchings 
- show an easier vein than his sculp- 
_ tures, but it is the ease of complete 
knowledge. The Navajo Watering 
_ Place gives not merely the move- 
ment and character of the Indians ; 
and goats but also th e sense of gre at 456 From the etching Navajo Weis Fae a the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
desert spaces — all in a few lines 
which are magically right. The whole thing is etching of the purest idiom, the line remaining line and never 
losing itself in tone. Young is also a good painter and best known as a sculptor (No. 357). 


ARTHUR B. DAVIES 


ARTHUR B. Davrss’ world is very much his own. His etchings give 
us only snatches of the fuller rhythms of his paintings. A tireless 
draftsman, he often practices on the copper. Single nudes or 
little arrangements of nudes are his subjects. The mood is abstract, 
and the abstraction is sometimes enhanced by a moderate em- 
ployment of the new Cubist formulas. It is an art that is caviare 
to most, but very delectable to such as yield themselves to the 
mood. As a consummate craftsman in many fields, Davies has not 
failed to investigate every possibility of etching. The Antique 
Mirror may well be technically unique in being entirely in aquatint 
without any acid-bitten lines. ’ Where a line is needed, the scraper 
has simply spared a strip of the untouched aquatint ground. But 
such technical niceties, though interesting, are the smallest part of 
Davies’ aristocratic and recondite art. He is another of the 
modern generation of American artists whose versatility is strik- 
ingly in evidence in his paintings. (See Nos. 178, 253-56, 466.) 


PAINTER- 
—- LITHOGRAPHY 
; : 457 From the aquatint The Anclgue Mirror, LirnocrapHy from the 
a a Geese first attracted the paint- 


ers, since the delicate task of printing could be left to professional 
_ hands. In France, Delacroix, Ingres, Chassériau and Puvis, with 
_ Millet and Corot, occasionally drew with the grease crayon, while 
~ Daumier, of course, was to make it his chief medium of expression. 
_ In America original lithography got no such foothold, but it came 
_ to us early in a few charming sheets of the painter William Morris 
_ Hunt, who was trained in the French surroundings which have 
been suggested. 

Hunt’s The Flower Seller, dated 1856, is still one of the best 
_ American painter-lithographs. It is very delicate in its modula- 
_ tions of grays without loss of strength, beautifully drawn, and the 
_ grain uses all the resources of the stone. Hunt, as has already been : 
noted (Nos. 102, 155), developed as a painter and did not follow 455° prom the lithograph The Flower Seller, 1856 
iq fe by W. M. Hunt, in the Metropolitan Museum of 
_up these early experiments. Art, Now York 


LC 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


270 


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272 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


463 From the lithograph The Blind, courtesy of the artist 


ALBERT STERNER, A.N.A. 


AMONG our painter-lithographers, Albert Sterner is a somewhat exotic figure. He was born at London of 
American parents, in 1863, spent his yout abroad, eying at Julian’s and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts before 


464 From Age lithograph The Studio in the iceeopalleia Museum 
of Art, New York, courtesy of Frederick Keppel & Co. 


he came to America in 1879. He wona precocious 
success as an illustrator and painter, but in his 
maturity turned to lithography as his most sym- 
pathetic medium. His figure subjects, for their 
imaginative and often tragic mood, have won him 
a place apart in an art which generally has remained 
chiefly naturalistic or decorative. They find their 
closest analogies in the prints of some of the German 
neo-romantic painters who have drawn on the copper- 
plate or on the stone. 


GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS, N.A., N.IA.L. 


GrorcsE Brettows was a prolific maker of lithographs, 
and perhaps at his best in that medium. His themes 
include, most catholicly, the prize ring, the barroom, — 
the studio, the gymnasium, the revivalist meeting, 
and he handled them all with energy and gusto, and 
often with humor. His tendency to force the blacks 
somewhat coarsely and to neglect those intermediate 
tones in which lithography is so rich has been un- 
favorably noted. It seems to me that the method 
corresponds to his brusque and assertive tempera- 
ment. His death at forty-one, when his powers were 
rapidly developing, was a sore loss for graphic design 
in America. (See Nos. 249-50.) 


465 


PAINTER-—ENGRAVING 273 


From the lithograph Brook Nymph, courtesy of the artist 


BOLTON BROWN 


UnutkeE Bellows, Bolton Brown avoids broad contrasts and draws in refinements of middle tones, keeping 
the whole effect silvery. Within this mode, his work is distinguished. His favorite theme is idyllic land- 
scape appropriately peopled with nudes. Aside from his activity as a painter-lithographer, he has written 
instructively on his craft and taught it to many others. He was born at Dresden, New York, in 1865. 


A DAVIES 
LITHOGRPH 


Tuat remote, delight- 
ful land of faéry and 
legend which Arthur B. 
Davies reveals in his 
paintings, he has also 
expressed in _ lithog- 
raphy. Here his meth- 
ods are most various 
and skillful, especially 
in the restrained use of 
color. Accordingly, re- 
production ordinarily 
does little justice to his 
artistry. In The Golden 
City one may at least 
enjoy the alertness of 
the drawing, and the 
economy with which a 
few light strokes of the 
crayon adequately sug- 
gest a broadscene. (See 
also Nos. 178, 253-56, 


‘ Sous SP esas a RS ok 
ct ae eile OR OR are 


VP obhus GB eee 2 ae 


466 From the lithograph The Golden City in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, courtesy of E. Weyhe 


457.) Davies is nowhere more skillful or more truly imaginative than in this apparently slight work. 


274 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


467 From the wood engraving A Waterfall by W. J. Linton, in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York 


PAINTER-WOOD 
ENGRAVING 


PAINTER-WOOD engraving 
was naturally an occasional 
activity of the remarkable 
craftsmen of the white-line 
period, but their style had 
been formed in reproduc- 
tive work and did not 
change in their occasional 
experiments in original de- 
sign. The original wood 
engraving of our own time, 
on the contrary, was to de- 
velop a style of its own 
based on the wood block 
of the Renaissance. From 
the men active before and 
after 1880 there is no abler 
woodcut than that of a 


waterfall by W. J. Linton, N.A., who, though an Englishman, from his long residence and influence in America, 
may be regarded as an honorary member of our school. Few engravings of the sort so fully combine breadth 
of effect with a minute exquisiteness in details. Broadly speaking, the method is white line, but Linton did not 
believe in strict formulas. An examination of the saplings overhanging the chasm and of those upstream will 
show many effective accents in black line. Linton was born in London in 1812. He came to America in 1867, 
and greatly influenced our schools. As a critic he opposed the extreme subtleties of the white-line manner. 
He died in 1897 at New Haven, Connecticut. He had published A Manual of Wood Engraving, 1887. 


ELBRIDGE KINGSLEY 


EBripGe Kines ey, of all his contemporaries, was the advocate of the original wood engraving, which he 
preferably sketched directly with the burin out-of-doors. His themes are the peaceful old towns of the 


middle Connecticut val- 
ley. He made larger and 
more imposing prints, 
even up to framing scale, 
but he made no better print 
than his Old Hadley Street. 
The space is strongly 
asserted without crude 
contrasts of light and 
dark, and the intimate 
sentiment of the scene is 
perfectly conveyed. These 
original woodcuts of 
Kingsley’s, signed sym- 
bolically with his wood- 
pecker device, are joys 
for the tranquil type of 
collector. Kingsley was 
born in 1842, at Carthage, 
Ohio, studied at Cooper 
Union, and died at New 
York in 1918, an honored 
survivor of a great school. 


468 


From the white-line wood engraving Old Hadley Street in The Century Magazine, Aug. 1887 


N 
* 


rae 


* 


Ea ae EL ae 


PAINTER-ENGRAVING Q75 


WILLIAM BAXTER 
~ PALMER CLOSSON 


Witu1raM B. P. Ciosson also 
cut several original blocks, 
including that fascinating in- 
vention, The Water Nymph. 
It is worked in the most del- 
icate manner, and is entirely 
in white line. Closson was 
born in Thetford, Vermont, 
in 1848, was chiefly self- 
trained through travel, and 
was one of the best of the 
white-line engravers. In 1894 
he abandoned wood-engrav- 
ing for pastel work and oils. 


He died in 1926. 469 From the white-line wood engraving The Water Nymph in The Century Magazine, Aug. 1889 


== SS == 


THE INFLUENCE OF WILLIAM MORRIS ON BOOK ILLUSTRATION 


Ir will be seen that these early painter-wood engravings are episodical — mere recreations of men usually 
enlisted in reproductive work. The real cult of the original wood block was not to arise until process engraving 
had driven the wood block from the copyist’s field, and the new work was to be rather decorative than pic- 
torial. It grew largely out of the general improvement of bookmaking during the eighteen nineties. In 


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The tendre croppes, and the ponge sonne 
Rath in the Ram his balfe cours yronne, 
And smale foweles maken melodye, 

That slepen al the nyght with open eye, 

So priketh hem nature in bir corages; 
Thanne tongen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 


And patmeres for toseken straunge strondes, ‘2? ON 
To ferne halwes, howthe in sondry londes; [<2 Ce 4 
And specially, from every shires ende gS ui el, 
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, Je Ne As 
The hooly blisful martir for to seke, » Los y= 
That hem hath holpen whan that they were OPAS Were 
scelkie. NS Taal cot 
FLL that in that seson on aday, oA Vey fs 


ES Ve In Southwerk at the Tabard as 
&. Lay, 

H a) « Redy to wenden on my pilgrym- 
e 3 Jage 

ex Ail To Caunterbury with ful devout 

corage, 

At nyght were come into that hostelrye 

Wel nyne and twenty in acompaignye, 

Of sondry foth, by aventure yfalle 


In felaweshipe, and pitgrimes were they alle, 
That tqward Caunterbury wolden ryde. 


. eerie 
TET POO SONA 
. 


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470 From the Kelmscott Chaucer, illustrated with decorative wood engrav- 
ings after designs by William Morris, in the New York Public Library 


England, William Morris had limited the illustra- 
tion of the beautifully printed books of the 
Kelmscott Press to boldly cut wood engravings. 
Partly he was imitating the splendid woodcut 
books of early Germany and Italy, partly he was 
working on the general theory that, since fine type 
is a sort of decoration in heavy black line made 
from a relief block, so the accompanying illustra- 
tion must also be in rich black line from a relief 
block. From a decorative point of view the 
theory was sound. It was taken up by other fine 
presses in England and America, and popularized 
by such annals as the Yellow Book in London and 
the Chap Book in Chicago. Considerably earlier, 
Howard Pyle (No. 511) had made admirable 
illustrations which, though printed by process, 
were based on the old wood-block style. His in- 
fluence was reinforced by that of Will Bradley and 
Louis Rhead, an Englishman by origin, who used 
the wood-block style ably for book decoration, 
illustration and poster design. The movement 
was transient. Except in posters it barely passed 
into the present century, but it had done an in- 
dispensable work in accustoming eyes, trained by 
the highly finished prints of the white-line wood 
engravers and by the specious completeness of the 
new process prints, to simpler and more mascu- 
line principles of design. Without such a prepa- 
ration the new woodcuts might have seemed as 
shocking as did the beginnings of the Post-im- 
pressionists. 


276 


PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ROCKWELL KENT 


RockweE.u Kent takes us to an austere No Man’s Land of his 
own creation. His simple and powerful methods of drawing 
led him to employ the style of the old wood engravers in the 
illustration of his own books, Wilderness and Voyaging. It was” 
a natural next step to cut such designs on the boxwood, and he 
has recently thus made a few prints of rare imaginative force. 
Some of the best are invitation cards for his exhibitions. We 
choose a woodcut which expresses his rare blend of physical 
energy with creative spiritual insight. His versatility of effort 
is most illuminating. That the same man should have created 
the cosmic mysticism of Immanence or Weltschmerz on the one 
hand, and his more popular Vanity Fair illustrations and 


advertisements on 
the other, is a phe- 
nomenon unique 
to the twentieth 
century. Under 
painting his life 
has been sketched, 
and 
turn to him as an 
iUlustrator. (See 
Nos. 262, 534, 557.) 


we shall re- 


471 From the wood engraving Mast-Head by 


RUDOLPH RUZICKA 


AMmoNnG contemporary makers of wood blocks one of the most 
distinguished is Rudolph Ruzicka. He was born in Bohemia 
in 1882, studied at the Chicago Art Institute, and makes illus- 
trations and separate prints at New York. Unlike most of the 
new wood-block cutters, who generally work in the style of the 
Renaissance woodcut, he practices a wholly modern style which 
seems based on such pen drawing as that of Daniel Viérge. The 
cut of The Municipal Office Building under construction gives 
his method. Upon a very delicatebut strong construction inline, 
the engraver superimposes from separate blocks a light tone or 
colored tint. One sees it in the foreground of our illustration. 
Ruzicka is also known for his excellent book illustrations. 


Wi 


473 From the wood engraving Vermont Farmhouse by Julius J. Lankes, 
courtesy of E. Weyhe 


472 From the wood engraving The Municipal Office 
Building in Construction, by Rudolph Ruzicka, in the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, courtesy of 
The Grolier Club 


JULIUS J. LANKES 


Wuitz Ruzicka’s themes are urban, 
those of Julius Lankes are rural. To 
express them, he has worked out an ap- 
propriately informal style in which the 
broad black line of the early schools 
works harmoniously with the bold 
white line of Bewick and Anderson. 
His broad and homely mood and manner 
are well represented in the print which 
depicts the Vermont home of the poet 
Robert Frost. Lankes was born in 
Buffalo, New York, in 1884, trained in 


the art schools of that city and of Boston, and lives among the scenes he loves at Gardenville, New York. 


CHAPTER XXII 


ILLUSTRATION 


HIS survey of the graphic arts by processes and engravers has already traced 
incidentally the main course of illustration. Other volumes of this series 
present American illustration very fully, so far as it is historical. Accordingly, 

our study of the chief illustrators and of the main tendencies may be rather brief. In it 
we are chiefly interested in the illustrator, and only secondarily in engravers and processes. 

In theory, the illustration and the decoration of a printed book should be one and the 
same thing. This counsel of perfection is, however, rarely followed, for its successful 
achievement imposes on the illustrator a very difficult compromise. To visualize a bit 
of text requires an elaborate method which is undecorative. To decorate a printed 
page requires simple methods with broad black lines which harmonize with the type face. 
But such a simplified and abstract manner does not lend itself to realistic illustration. 


‘So our more decorative illustrators, such as Elihu Vedder and Howard Pyle, expressly 


declined to follow their texts closely, and appropriately called their designs not illustra- 
tions but accompaniments. Generally speaking, decoration has been ignored, It was so 
at the outset, when the printed picture began to make a timid appearance in American 
books and magazines. 

Nothing in the eighteenth century is worthy of even passing notice. The homemade 
production was rare and poor. Toward the end of the century and in the early years of 
the next there was among the publishers of Philadelphia and Baltimore abundant piracy 
of contemporary English illustration. This did something to improve taste, and at least 
set our engravers to copying good models. : 

As we began to illustrate our books and magazines from our own resources, line en- 
graving was regarded as the finer process and wood engraving as an inferior substitute. 
A little later mezzotint began to rival line engraving, lithography making an occasional 
appearance as a curiosity or utility. Such was the situation until about 1850, when wood 
engraving begins to take the lead. 

Akin to the magazines are the gift annuals. They begin with the Atlantic Souvenir 
in 1826, reach a peak of an average of sixty annuals a year between 1845 and 1855, then 
shrink rapidly and virtually disappear with the Civil War. Being intended for gifts of 
sentiment, they employed all the resources of fashionable bookmaking. Their names 
suggest their scope. Precious stones and flowers are favorites — the Mayflower, the 
Amaranth, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily, the Iris; the Amethyst, the Emerald, the Amulet, 
the Talisman. Sometimes the appeal to sentiment was made less covertly, as in The 
Keepsake, Remember Me, Gage d@ Amitié, Love’s Offering. They all presented a miscellany 
of popular authors and illustrators. Varying in size from pocket form to stately octavo, 
they were generally bound in a glory of stamped and gilded leather and ornamented - 
often inside with an opulence of colored and even gilded lithographs. However, as de 
luxe publications, the usual illustration was some form of copperplate engraving. Their 
vogue then and artistic insignificance now remind us how rarely through the nineteenth 
century fashionable art has been good art. However, there is still a mild pleasure in 
handling them, as there is in unexpectedly finding a pressed flower in a long unopened 
book. Such discoveries powerfully evoke discursive reverie. 

Q277 


278 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


More than any other artist the illustrator for a generation past has been affected 
by the photographic reproduction of pictures. 

‘The photomechanical processes of engraving are too various and complicated to be 
described in a book of this kind. Most of them are etchings upon a design photo- 
graphically transferred to the prepared metal plate. There are, of course, intaglio proc- 
esses, like photogravure, used for fine reproduction; and relief-block processes — half-tone 
and line block — used for magazine and book illustration. The relief block, like its fore- 
runner, the wood block, has the advantage that it can be set with type and printed there- 
with, while intaglio prints must be made inconveniently in a separate printing or in- 
serted on plates. The half-tone process is the most in use. A photographic negative of 
the original drawing is made in the usual way, except that a glass screen of minutely 
ruled opaque lines is placed between the lens and the negative. This screen breaks up 
the entire surface of the negative into dots. The negative, when developed, is printed 
upon a piece of sensitized copper. Heat applied to the metal plate hardens the dots 
so they will resist the acid of the bath, which is the next step. Where the plate is 
free from dots the metal is “bitten”? away by the acid and the dots remain in relief. It 
is the lightness or the darkness of these dots that reproduces the values of the original 
drawing. The inherent defect of the half-tone process is that the screen covers the 
entire surface of the block forbidding alike the brightest lights and the deepest darks. 
To meet this defect the lights are sometimes tooled with a graver in the white-line 
manner, and the darks burnished down until they are almost solid. By three printings, . 
or four (including a black printing), in the primary colors, a fairly accurate color fac- 
simile can be made. But the inks mix somewhat uncertainly, the yellow especially has 
a tendency to dominate, and in general the results are more specious than satisfactory. 

Up to the point where a relief block could cope with tone, about 1890, the magazines 
were not much interested in the new photomechanical processes. As soon as it was found 
that in a small fraction of the time and at a twentieth of the price of a wood block worked 
in white line an approximation to its effect could be secured, the doom of reproductive 
wood engraving was only a matter of a short time. Moreover, the even cheaper process 
line block copied a line drawing with a fidelity impossible to the graver. The innovation 
meant an immediate liberation and an ultimate impoverishment of illustration. ‘There 
was to be no more of that careful collaboration between illustrator and editor, wood 
engraver and printer, each in his degree an artist; everything was soon to become a com- 
plete division of labor under conditions of quantity production. 

A word is necessary upon the enormous production of printed pictures in the past 
thirty years which, having next to nothing to do with art, does not here concern us. In 
the early eighteen nineties the ten and fifteen-cent magazine and the illustrated Sunday 
supplement of the daily papers began life together. Their success was eventually to kill 
the printed picture as art, reducing it to a manufacture, the poor quality of which was in- 
evitably decreed by quantity production. The magazine was no longer treasured and read 
considerately and often bound year by year, but was hastily scanned on the train and left 
with the brakeman. Both the reading matter and the pictures were prepared for this public. 
The established illustrators were enlisted at pay they had never enjoyed from the old family 
monthlies, but they promptly sank to the esthetic level of their new employers. In par- 
ticular, the printing of process cuts in the nation-wide weeklies was and is so inferior that 
an illustrator would be foolish to submit a good drawing to the pressman. Besides, the 
greater public only wants pictures, and is indifferent to their quality or even to their rele- 
vance to the text. As I write, of the illustrated magazines only Scribner's keeps going on the 
old basis. Gilbert Seldes in The Seven Lively Arts easily persuades me that the comic strip 
is lively, but not that it is art. I have seen too many distinguished and delightful talents, 
such as Fontaine Fox and Winsor McCay, fall to the level of their editors and public. 


; ILLUSTRATION 279 
hy 
ak 
. 
A 
% 
ip 
é FLAT ROCE DAN, CN SCHUYLEILE. 
8 474 From the lithograph by Pendleton after the painting Flat Rock Dam, on Schuylkill by T. Doughty, 
# for the Pori Folio, Aug. 1827 


THE PORT FOLIO 


Tyricau illustrated magazines of the early nineteeenth 
century are the Port Folio, 1801, Godey’s, 1830, and 
Graham’s, 1841, all of Philadelphia. In its twenty- 
odd years of struggling existence, with much inferior 
illustration, the Port Folio published a few well- 
engraved plates after the best artists of the moment. 
Thus in the number for August, 1827, appeared a 
lithograph after a painting by Thomas Doughty 
(No. 65). It is not a thrilling thing, but it is a 
pleasant enough print, and it expresses an honorable 
editorial endeavor to give the reader the best, and 
enterprise in giving a new process a trial. 


INMAN’S ILLUSTRATION FOR THE SPY 


Henry Inman’s sensational illustration for The Spy, 
in the Port Folio for March, 1829, is well up to the 
level of English illustration at the time. Our own 
book illustration of the period has little to show of 
equal merit. It suggests that talent was less lack- aa BOE aan 
ing than opportunity for the early American illus- THE SPY fini ase 
trator. The pocket size Port Folio was on the point : 

of giving way to bigger but not better magazines, 
which were ultimately to foreshadow that general 
cheapening of illustration which we have seen fully 
accomplished in our own day. (See also No. 406.) 475 From the Port Folio, March 1829, line engraving by C. G. Childs 


“When a flere entered the room that appalléd the ZrOUp...» 


280 


ti 


i . 


476 From Morse’s illustration The Wife for Godey’s Lady's Book, 
Dec. 1831, line engraving by A. 


B. Durand 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


A SENTIMENTAL AGE 


THE appeal of Godey’s and Graham’s magazines was 
overtly to sentiment, and they had their prompt re- 
ward. As regards art, they are nearly negligible. 
They dealt in the saccharine, and there is no staleness 
like that of the saccharine which is not of our own 
times. Paging over old numbers of Godey’s and 
Graham’s, the person of taste amid a plethora of 
sentimental illustration will find little to detain him 
except the quaint tinted fashion plates and the charm- 
ing patterns for lace and embroidery. Still they 
occasionally made an effort. Durand’s little engray- 
ing after S. F. B. Morse’s painting, The W7fe, in an 
early number of Godey’s, is quite first-class for its time 
and good for any time. Unhappily, it is a little dark 
for reproduction, but, even so, its charm and the 
skill with which the lighting is handled will escape no 
attentive person. Such work was exceptional. 


THE PASSING OF GODEY’S 
AND GRAHAM’S 


THE average pictorial appeal to our young grand- 
mothers is better represented by Leutze’s Why Don’t 
He Come? mezzotinted by John Sartain. This crea- 
tion united one of the best painters (No. 55) with one 
of the best engravers, both, however, placed in servi- 
tude to an editor who knew his public. The picture 
was calculated to keep the young woman of the day in 
suspense for a month. The next number of Graham’s 


contained the joyous sequel, He Comes! Scattered inconspicuously through Godey’s and Graham's were 


excellent little woodcuts, sometimes by Anderson (No. 410). 


More intelligent editors would have seen that 


this was the illustration of the future. Instead they made desperate and costly efforts to maintain the tradition 


of elegance associated with 
the steel plate. The plates 
wore out fast. For a long 
time Sartain had to make 
three plates of each of his 
mezzotints to meet the 
mounting circulation. Gra- 
ham’s perished early under 
the strain, Godey’s sur- 
vived the Civil War by a 
few years. Both left the 
exploitation of the wood- 
cut to the new magazines 
of the eighteen-fifties — 
Harper's Monthly and 
Weekly, Gleason’s, and 
Frank Leslie's, published 
at New York or Boston. 
For many years and quite 
to our own time it was to 
be impossible to run a 
magazine on pure gentility. 


477 


From Leutze’s illustration Why Don't He Come? for Graham's M sjeaual x VIII, 1841, 
mezzotint by John Sartain 


ILLUSTRATION 281 


A “GIFT ANNUAL” ILLUSTRATION 


Amonc the gift annuals the staple of illustration was 
feminine beauty. We have a favorable example of 
this in the Token of Friendship, Boston, 1851. 
E. H. Ball, the creator of this vision of loveliness, 
may well be an English painter. If so, the case is 
representative, for the editors of American annuals 
too often borrowed both their literary and pictorial 
features from England. The method again is typical 
— a sleek mezzotint reinforced by the etched line. 


478 From the illustration Spring of Life for the Token of GE galt 2 
Boston, 1851, mezzotint by Joseph Andrews and H. W. Smith 


479 From Weir's illustration The Drawing Book for the American 
Juvenile Keepsake, 1835, line engraving by Thomas Illman 


ROBERT WALTER WEIR, N.A. 


Ir visions of beauty flattered our grandmothers, so did 
domestic incidents please them. We have an alluring one 
in R. W. Weir’s The Drawing Book, an attraction of the 
American Juvenile Keepsake for 1835. It was drawn while 
Weir was Professor of Drawing at the Military Academy 
at West Point. Weir was later to wina considerable 
repute as a painter of American history (Vol. I, No. 395) 
and should not be judged by this early effort. 


THE SNOWFLAKE, A “GIFT ANNUAL” 


FREQUENTLY, these giftbooks were enlivened by colored 
lithography. Often it supplies only a title-page or pres- 
entation plate. Such was the case with The Snowflake of 
1849. Its dedication plate is lithographed in gold and 


. . . . 1 t 
colors, and appropriately depicts the joys of winter. Seen ete ae i ban and clare 


282 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THE TALISMAN 


But lithography was not always content with this modest 
role. The temperance annuals often scream intemperately 
with color, as do others. The Talisman of 1852 was illus- 
trated with colored lithographs with ornamental borders 
in gold designed by Devereux, and the hesitant purchaser 
was most specifically assured on the title-page that every- 
thing was printed in real oil colors. 


481 From Devereux’s Rasselas first beholding the Nile for 
the Talisman, 1852, lithograph in gold and colors 


JOHN GADSBY CHAPMAN, N.A. 


WE do not leave prettiness behind us but we at 
least emerge from insipidity when we come upon 
J. G. Chapman, the best and most popular illus- 
trator of the day. His drawing of The Chief's 
Daughter made for The Brilliant in 1850 does not 
too much lose its alertness under the smooth com- 
mercial engraving through which it has passed. 
It makes possible the rather difficult feat of carry- | 
ing away from our study of the annuals any im- 482 From Chapman's The Chief's Daughter tor The Brilliant, New 
5 a York, 1850, line engraving by Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Co. 

pression of art. As a matter of fact, the relatively 

little art there was in our illustration before 1850 was confined to the humble field of the woodcut. Chapman 
was born at Alexandria, Virginia, in 1808. Returning in 1848 to Italy he spent many years there painting 
landscape. He was a clever illustrator of books, and a successful etcher. He died at Brooklyn in 1889. 


RELIGIOUS TRACTS > 


Woop engraving was on the whole applied to humble 
uses until Harpers’ Illuminated Bible, 1846, gave it 
standing. For example, the various religious tract 
societies found it wise to attract the unbeliever by 
a picture on the tinted cover or title-page of every 
tract, and the picture had to be at once cheap and 
expressive. 

From the tracts of the American Baptist Publica- 
tion Society, active in the second quarter of the 
century, two cuts are chosen. One is a title vignette 


483 From the white-line wood engraving for American ; 
Baptish BubucaMOR BOC ey a eer for The Christian Stewardship, Tract No. 108. It is 


acharming suggestion of a sunset, and it well illustrates its text, “The night cometh when no man can work.” 


PS A a pe 


ae 


4 tent with second-rate woodcuts. 


ILLUSTRATION 


BAPTIST TRACT NO. 87 

THE same Society offered a more ambitious print 
on the pink cover of Tract No. 87. It represented 
in vigorous white line The Loss of the Ship Kent 
by Fire. It is one of the better nautical designs 
of a period that excelled in that branch. The 
indication of the heaving of the helpless ship in a 
sea running over shallows is entirely truthful and 
masterly. 


THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
Acatn the American Tract Society was a con- 
stant and intelligent patron of the wood engraver. 
Some of its little cuts seem to-day merely quaint, 
as that of a Sabbath-breaking boating party 
which is not only imperiling its souls and 
bodies but also its best clothes. However, with 
the text, it doubtless did its work of serving as 
“a warning to Sabbath-breakers.” For years 
the Society maintained a mediocre press, con- 
A change of 


283 


484 From the white-line wood engraving The Loss of the Ship Kent by Fire, 
ae sea 1849, for the American Baptist Publication Society, Tract 
No. 


management, however, resulted in improved work. Better presses were bought, and much greater care was 
taken to secure purity and delicacy of line. The new presses facilitated clearness in facsimile, and made it pos- 
sible to concentrate attention on the tone as well as on the smoothness of tints. The monotony of expression 


found in all the prints may be ascribed to the general pr 


& ae ee 


From the wood engraving A Warning to Sabbath-breakers 
for the American Tract Society, Tract No. 191 


A TRACT SOCIETY WOOD ENGRAVING 
THERE are better woodcuts in these tracts. That 
which represents a Swiss freshet is well designed and 
employs all the resources of the woodcutting of the 
time. There is probably some influence of the English 


485 


_ line engravings after Turner’s vignettes in such work. 


It is also an early example of the habit of interlocking 
text and cuts, a move, if not a good one, toward 
decoration. Besides its tracts, the American Tract 


3 Society published books and magazines with woodcut 


illustration of a generally high order. Its patronage 
helped toward that improvement in the art which 


xlI—19 


actice of imitating contemporary English engraving. 


Joseph A. Adams (No. 412), Alexander Anderson 
(No. 410), C. G. Childs and J. H. E. Whitney (No. 


423) were the Society’s best engravers. 


Ye who sincerely desire rest for 


your souls; who would rejoice ‘to 
have peace with God, and to be as- 
sured of his love towards you ; listen 
to a simple narrative of secencs which 
I have witnessed, 


486 From the wood engraving The Valesian Flood, for the American 
Tract Society, The Swiss Peasant, Tract No. 180 


‘ followed the year 1850. The religious tracts exemplify an enormous amount of unpretentious and semi- 
commercial wood engraving which is generally surprisingly good, as sound utilitarian work often is. 


284 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


AN UNSIGNED 
WOODCUT OF 1857 


One of these nameless prints a 
little beyond the limits of the 
period we are discussing repre- 
sents the rescue of Captain Ross 
and was published in Epes Sar- 
gent’s Arctic Adventure. It took 
no mean degree of imagination 
to realize this Arctic scene from 
slight sketches or mere descrip- 
tions, while it took uncommon 
talent in the engraver to cut it 
so simply and resolutely in a 
fashion fairly anticipating the 
impending white-line method. 
Again and again one is struck by 
the excellence of such commer- 
cial and nameless prints. In- 
deed, in retrospect, the mass of popular woodcuts during this period is more notable artistically than the mass 
of aristocratic illustration printed from the copperplate. Time often makes such reversals. When the future 
historian of the American graphic art of to-day searches our nation-wide weeklies, I feel confident he will take 
more notes from the advertising sections than from the literary 
sections. 


487 From a wood engraving Ross’ Rescue for Epes Sargent, Arctic Adventure, Boston, 1857 


COPPERPLATE ILLUSTRATIONS, 
MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY 


CopPERPLATE engraving, however, held its own for fine illus- 
tration until the middle of the nineteenth century. It may be 
briefly dismissed. It produced at least, in 1840, the first con- 
sistently decorated book made in America, John Keese’s The 
Poets of America, published at New York. Around the poems 
burgeon foliated and figured borders of delicate and sprightly 
design. Sometimes the adornment dwindles to headpieces and 
tailpieces. The notion of engraved accompaniment to a, printed 
text was presumably borrowed from William Blake’s illustra- 
tions for Young’s Night Thoughts. But the more direct inspira- 
tion for the sylphs which sway through the composition is the 
popular English illustrator, Thomas Stothard. Just once there 
is a signature of William Croome as designer and of Jordan & 
Halpin as engravers. The book is as exceptional as it is charming. 


488 From Croome’s decorative page for Keese’s The 
Poets of America, New_York, 1840, copperplate en- 
graving by Jordan & Halpin 


GEORGIA SCENES 


Ercuine makes an almost isolated appearance 
in the alert vignettes made for Georgia Scenes 
by a Native Georgian. These humorous little 
prints are by two hands, so the preface tells us. 
One would like to know the amateurs who 
handled the etcher’s needle with such raciness. 


aes They are a refreshing apparition at a generally 
489 From the etching Hurrying to the Races for Longstreet, 
Georgia Scenes by a Native Georgian, New York, 1850 dull moment. 


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Sree -onpoid snoidoo AraA ® UI 9388} poos puv JouMNyY poos “yuauspnl poos sty Jo uosvas Aq Joy}eI NG 
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SONTTTIG LLIVANVH 


286 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


DARLEY’S RANGE 


Dar ey can be tragically dramatic, as in The 
Death of King Philip, for the Artists’ Edition of 
Irving’s Sketch Book and again he was the only 
conceivable American illustrator of the broad 
humor and melodrama of Charles Dickens. 
Though later American illustrators have sur- 
passed him at certain points, he still remains the 
most universal illustrator we have produced. 


492 From Darley’s Death of King Philip for Irving, The Sketch Book, 
New York, 1864, wood engraving by Richardson 


DARLEY’S HUMOR 


For his shrewd and quietly humorous vein let us take an 
illustration for the beautifully illustrated Enoch Arden of 
1865. It holds its own admirably alongside the more 
intense designs of young Vedder and La Farge. The slight 
but telling touch of antiquarianism is characteristic of 
Darley in historical illustration. Darley’s broader humor 
is well exemplified in the vignette for Whittier’s Cobbler 
Keezar published in New England Ballads, 1870. Such a 
thing looks simple and even obvious, but such simplicity 
rests upon the most thorough preparation, as Darley’s 


innumerable trial-drawings and sketchbook notes attest.  *% From Darley’ 6 tae creak oncravia: wea nee 


THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN 
ILLUSTRATOR 


Dar.ey was born in Philadelphia in 1822, went 
into business, trained himself as an illustrator, 
and made himself famous both in America and 
Europe before his thirtieth year through his out- 
lines made for the New York Art Union illustrat- 
ing Irving’s Catskill legends. The rest is a story 
of unremitting endeavor for the book and maga- 
zine publishers. As late as the middle eighteen 
seventies we find him contributing with the 
freshness of youth sketches of European travel 
to Appleton’s Journal. He died in 1888 at Clay- 
mont, Delaware, eclipsed in his later years by 
the new generation of illustrators. Of his whim- 
sical and humoristic vein, Augustus Hoppin 
(No. 415) and Sol Eytinge, Jr., were successful 
emulators. In a larger sense Darley left no succes- 
S04 yom Dovleys Te Cover Kesar Lauate forwalies Nee sors, (For Darley, see also Vols. II, III and XI.) 


ILLUSTRATION 287 


495 From Vedder’s Building the Canoe tor Tennyson, Enoch Arden, Boston, 1865, 
wood engraving by Anthony and Davis 


MID-NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOOK ILLUSTRATION 


Dar.ey’s career coincided happily with that progress in black-line wood engraving which has been described 
in the preceding chapter. The landmarks are three remarkable books: Irving’s Sketch Book, published in 


1852 by the Putnams with Darley as sole illustrator 
and J. W. Orr in charge of the wood engraving; the 
Artists’ Edition of the same work, published by 
Lippincott in 1863 with Darley and numerous other 
designers and J. H. Richardson as chief woodcutter 
and superintendent, and Ticknor & Fields’ edition 
of Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, 1865 (No. 493), with 
A. V. S. Anthony in charge. The latter book en- 
listed beside Darley the brilliant new talents of 
Elihu Vedder and John La Farge and the facile gift 
of W. J. Hennessy. It set the fashion for the Boston 


books of poetry which under Anthony’s able direc- . 


tion were deservedly popular for more than a decade. 
Though few surpassed their prototype, they remain 
among the best things we have produced in pure 
illustration; and though modest in ornamental 
features, they are still far from negligible from the 
strictly typographical point of view. It was not to 
be expected that Anthony should always find illus- 
trators of the power of Vedder and La Farge, both 
destined to be famous painters; but he did enlist 
the young talents of Mary Hallock Foote and C. S. 
Reinhart, while he made the maturer genius of 
Winslow Homer pay tribute to illustration before 
devoting itself solely to painting. 


aiken 


at v; 
IU 


ANTHONY + DAV/S Sl 


496 


From La Farge’s Enoch Alone for Tennyson, Hnoch Arden, 
Boston, 1865, wood engraving by Anthony and Davis 


288 


497 From Fenn’s illustration for 
Bound, Boston, 1868, wood engraving by A. V. Ss. An- 


thony 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Whittier, Snow-. 


WINSLOW HOMER, N.A. 


Winstow Homer often appears in a homespun, 
rustic vein, as in Bryant’s Song of the F ountain, but 
there are occasional intimations of his later tragic 
power, as in the cut of the forspent climber of Long- 
fellow’s Excelsior. The largeness and simplicity of 
the design are noteworthy. As engravers, Anthony 
enlisted such veterans as Filmer and certain young 
men, like the Englishman, W. J. Linton, and Henry 
Marsh, who were to play a large part in the approach- 
ing revolution of the art of wood engraving. (See also 


Nos. 80-81, 125-30, 420, 498, 506.) 


499 From La Farge’s illustration 
from the Old Dramatists, New Yor 
by H. Marsh 


for Richardson, Songs 
k, 1873, wood engraving 


HARRY FENN 


Amone Anthony’s best finds was Harry Fenn, who had a 
special gift for catching the intimate character of New England 
scenery. He also in the big designs for the admirable woodcuts 
in Picturesque America (No. 421) successfully measured himself 
against our more grandiose sites. An excellent composer of 
architectural subjects, Fenn perhaps is most himself in little 
vignettes for poetry. He was born in England in 1845, came to 
America in 1864, and died in 1911. He was a most versatile 
general utility illustrator. 


Excelsior. 


There in the twilight cold and gray.,. 


Lifcless, but beautiful, he lay; 


498 From Homer’sillustration for Longfellow, Excelsior, Boston, 
1878, wood engraving by A. V. S. Anthony 


JOHN LA FARGE, N.A., S.A.A. 


Tum fashion of these little books of poetry spread from 
Boston. One of the best of them, Songs from the Old Drama- 
tists, illustrated by La Farge, was published in 1873, in 
New York, by Hurd and Houghton. Already in the delicate, 
pictorial completeness of the design we have the note of the 
new illustrators; and even in the woodcutting (probably by 
Henry Marsh) are many of the tonal refinements of the 
now imminent white-line manner. La Farge, despite his 
scanty production, shares with Winslow Homer the honor 
of being the most important American illustrator between 
Darley, and Abbey and Howard Pyle. It has seemed better 
to represent La Farge by his forgotten masterpieces than by 
such hackneyed if masterly designs as the Wolf Charmer 
and the Pied Piper. (See also Nos. 108-10, 152-54, 
186-87, 220-21.) 


289 


ILLUSTRATION 


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290 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA & 


SCRIBNER’S MONTHLY 


THE leadership of the illustrated 
monthly magazines was early 
assumed by Seribner’s Monthly 
(1871-81). Its first five or six 
volumes are not extraordinary 
for illustration, but at least little 
is perfunctory, everything seems 
thought out and alive. The 
wood engraving is generally ex- 
cellent. The editors clearly gave 
the best that was available in 
America. 

By the last years of the eight- 
een seventies Scribner’s reaches 
a turning point. Under the art 
editorship of Alexander W. 
Drake, illustration reaches its 
best estate, and the new white- 
line wood engraving emerges to 
cope with the new problems of 
fine reproduction. The story 
may be read by turning over the 


501_ From Mary Hallock Foote’s illustration for The Picture in the Fireplace Bedroom in A Port- ; u > 
folio of Proof Impressions from Scribner’s Monthly and St. Nicholas, New York, 1879, wood en- volumes of Scribner s and St. 


pgheee Sette aoe Nicholas for 1876 and 1877. 
Here we find the culminating point of black-line engraving and pen draftsmanship in such a cut as Henry 
Marsh’s Etruscan Fan after Roger Riordan (No. 424), Scribner’s, August, 1877; Timothy Cole, soon to shine 
among the white-liners, making a line block after the veteran, C. S. Reinhart, Scribner’s, J anuary, 1877, and 
the gifted Englishman, W. J. Linton, going far in the direction of white line when interpreting the popular 
illustrator, Mary Hallock Foote, for St. Nicholas about 
1879. These are about the last of the old. The process 
line block was soon to supersede the hand-cut line block, 
fostering new beauties and complications of pen drawing, 
while white line was to cope with the new and more 
painter-like illustration in tone. 


TIMOTHY COLE’S PIONEER WHITE LINE 


Tue much discussed white-line style has already been 
considered. Whatever its merits and defects, the wood 
engravers had no choice. Confronted with illustrations 
that were complete paintings, and with artists and art 
editors who insisted on exact copying of the tones, 
there was nothing for them to do but to reject the old 
linear methods and the old ideal of linear interpretation 
of the drawing in favor of painting with the graver. For 
many years white-line passages had been common and 
increasing. It was the appearance of an audacious new 
illustrator for Scribner’s, James E. Kelly, later a sculptor, 
that forced the change. Mr. Drake, the editor, insisted 
that Kelly’s brilliant and ragged wash drawings be 
closely reproduced, and nothing but white line would do 
it. Timothy Cole regards his unsigned print after Kelly’s 


Lhe Gillie Boy as the first woodcut completely executed 553 Wom Kelly’s illustration The Gillie Boy tor Scribner's Monthly 


in the new manner. Meigen ee Bee dic Aug. 1877, white-line wood engraving by 


ILLUSTRATION 291 


JUENGLING’S PIONEER 
WHITE LINE 


In the same issue of Scribner’s appeared 
another pioneer of white line. Juengling’s 
cut after Kelly’s Engineer Crossing a 
Chasm is a more brilliant and consistent 
example of the manner than Cole’s, and 
Kelly and Juengling together pressed the 
revolution to the point of success. Nor 
should Drake be forgotten. His act in 
rejecting Juengling’s first block for the 
Engineer and insisting that all the loose- 
ness of the brush-drawing should pass to 
the block is perhaps one of the most momen- 
tous editorial decisions in history. W. J. 
Linton, in concluding his classic history of 
wood-engraving in America, falls foul of 
Juengling and of what the author terms the 
new ““Chinese”’ school of engraving, which 
adheres strictly to the Confucian tenets of 
complete self-effacement. All artistic per- 
sonality, Linton claims, is gone, replaced by 
a slavish photographic imitation of the 
original with all the meaningless, un- 
selective detail and fineness of the photo- 


graph. 


603 From Kelly's Engineer Crossing a Chasm for Scribner’s Monthly Illustrated 
Magazine, Aug. 1877, white-line wood engraving by F. Juengling 


COLE’S LINCOLN 


Drake, when in 1881 Scribner’s Monthly became 
the Century Magazine, had only to continue his 
old policy. Though there was much excellent 
illustration for text, the ideal was rather that of a 
choice pictorial album. Timothy Cole’s admirable 
white-line cuts after old and modern masterpieces 
of painting were the prominent feature, as were 
Elbridge Kingsley’s transcriptions of American 
landscape. That universal talent, Henry Wolf, 
made the white line translate not only painting 
but ancient and modern sculpture. Often little 
or no text accompanied such plates. Their per- 
fection was due to an ideal codperation between 
art editor, artist, wood engraver and printer. 
Nothing was shirked. There resulted perfections 
which cannot be repeated under modern mechan- 
ized conditions. One scans Cole’s marvelous 
woodcut after Wyatt Eaton’s pen drawing of 
Lincoln with mixed feelings, wondering whether 
the added shade of refinement over a process cut 
from the same original justifies the pains. Hap- 
pily, such counting the cost never deterred the 
white-line men of the strenuous ‘nineties. The 
unsparing criticism of the older school of en- 
gravers was both a spur and a curb to their 


ae 


il celal | eee 


ee a ee eee ee ee eee 


aor’ 504 From the white-line wood engraving by T. Cole. After Eaton’s 
activity. pen drawing for The Century Magazine. © The Century Co. 


292 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


for The Legend of St. Gwendoline, New York, 1867 


A HELIOTYPE 


In 1874 there were reproduced by the new process of heliotype (by which 
the negative was transferred to and printed frém a gelatin plate) Winslow 
Homer’s vigorous silhouettes for The Courtin’, by James Russell Lowell. 
This delightful series is doubtless reminiscent of the shadow plays which 
were a favorite diversion of the moment, and the book is at once unique 


4 


s 4 
S: when the A\mget of the dake wish 
NS ANt last shall find you by the river-brink, 
: Pts offering his Gp. invite your Soul 
< forth U6 your Line ts quatt—youshall marihyteket 


i 
} 


507 From Vedder’s illustration of quatrain XLIX for The 


Rubdiyat of Omar Khayyaém, Boston, 1884; heliotype re- 
production 


505 From the photographic reproduction of Ehninger’s painting thu s be illustrate d 


THE BEGINNINGS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC 
REPRODUCTION 


Tur idea of utilizing photography for illustration came 
early to publishers and editors, but the technical 
means were not available until the early eighteen 
seventies, and reached perfection only in the early 
‘nineties. Meanwhile, photography was used to 
shorten the labors of the lithographer and wood 
engraver, and occasionally a book was illustrated 
with inserted photographs. The best experiment of 
this sort was the anonymous The Legende of St. 
Gwendoline, published by the Putnams in 1867. The 
small and careful 
designs of John W. 
Ehninger (1827-99) 
were regarded as 
too fine to entrust 
to the wood engray- 
ers and were beauti- 
fully photographed 
by Addis. It is 
evident that only a 
costly book of small 
circulation could 


and one of the best efforts 506 From Homer's Zekle crep’ up unbe- 
re a known for Lowell The Courtin’, Boston, 
of its times. 1874, heliotype reproduction 


A VEDDER HELIOTYPE 


Tue magazines, having their excellent corps of wood en- 
gravers, were slow in trying the new processes, leaving such 
experimentation to the book publishers. They tried the in- 
novations chiefly in publications de luae. Of these by far the 
most notable is The Rubdiydt of Omar Khéyydm, illustrated 
by Elihu Vedder and published by Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company in 1884. Nineteen years earlier, in the Enoch 
Arden for the same publishers’ predecessors, Vedder had shown 
a high promise as an imaginative designer which is here 
superbly fulfilled. In the romantic pessimism of the Persian 
poet he found a congenial theme. Including the text of the 
quatrains in his illustrations, he worked after the fashion of a 
Renaissance scribe, and the book was really a facsimile of a 
pictured manuscript. From this point of view it is not wholly 
successful, being printed in too pale an ink. The heliotype 
process proved to be impracticable save only for limited edi- 
tions of expensive books, but even so, Vedder’s accompani- 
ments for Omar remain our highest achievement in purely 
imaginative illustration, with nothing very close as a second. 


ILLUSTRATION 


RESULTS OF THE NEW PROCESSES 


OruHER publishers experimented with fine illustration in the 
costly photogravure (intaglio) process. Kenyon Cox’s draw- 
ings for Rossetti’s The Blessed Damosel were thus reproduced, 
and Will H. Low’s for Keats’ Lamia. Although the typo- 
graphical decorations were made by the artists, the resultant 
books were somewhat hybrid in effect, the intaglio cuts failing 
to harmonize with the letterpress, and the experiment was not 
pursued. 

All our greatest illustrators of the end of the last century drew 
first for wood engraving and later for process. The ever popular 
C.S. Reinhart (1844-96) evidently drew with more simplicity and 
force when he drew 
for the wood block. 
Day Dreams, when 
compared with his 
illustration of some 
nine years later, 
The Kissing Gate, 
shows the case very 
clearly. 


509 From a process line engraving of Reinhart’s Kissing 
Gate in Devon for Harper’s Magazine, Jan. 1886 


HOWARD PYLE, N.A. 


Or the reflective illustrators, the greatest seem Howard 
Pyle, Edwin A. Abbey, Robert Blum and Joseph 
Pennell. Howard Pyle was as universal as Darley 
had been, and more pungent. Born at Wilmington, 
Delaware, in 1853, after slight training at Philadel- 
phia, Pyle sought his fortune at New York, in 1876. 
After a few years of increasing success he returned to 
the peacefulness of his native town. There, aside 
from his extraordinary personal industry as an illus- 
trator, he maintained generous activities as a teacher, 
and had the satisfaction of seeing his pupils do him 
credit. He wore himself out early, dying in Italy in 
1911 in his fifty-ninth year. 


His work may be most conveniently divided nto [eae 
510 From 


Sulla i! scmmtocts 


Pyle’s The Choicest Piece 


293 


508 From Reinhart’s Day Dreams for Scribner's Monthly 
ee Magazine, Jan. 1877, wood engraving by 
. Cole. 


s of Cargo Were Sold at Auction for 


American history, for which he employed the wash; Howard Pyle, A Chronicle, New York, white-line wood engraving by 


- * é 5 A. Lindsay. 
medizval legend, in line; and miscellaneous folklore 


© Harper & Bros. 


and saga material in wash or color. His power to make our past live is exemplified in an early illustration of 
a slave auction. It well represents the vigor and truthfulness of such work as he did for Woodrow Wilson’s 
History of the American People, for The Spirit of America and for his own book on the buccaneers. 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


294 


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296 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM, N.A. 


In a few Japanese subjects Robert F. Blum fairly 
rivals Abbey in charm of sentiment and in delicacy 
of workmanship. Every touch of the pen seems a 
caress, and withal the essential forms are learnedly 
and solidly constructed. Blum apparently re- 
garded illustration merely as a stepping-stone to 
figure painting and mural decoration. It is possible 
that the future will value most highly those illus- 
trations of which he thought rather little himself. 


515 From the process line engraving of Blum’s The Ameya for 
Scribner’s Magazine, January 1891 


BLUM’S JOE JEFFERSON 


Buu was only casually an illustrator, but his pen drawing was of 
such consummate quality as to make his scanty work of the first 
importance. Here he learned much from Fortuny. The line is 
short and brittle, with twinkling effect and magical implication of 
atmosphere. One sees the brilliancy and picturesqueness of his 
method in the famous pen drawing of the great comedian Joe 
Jefferson as Bob Acres. It would be hard to imagine anything more 
completely alive. (See also Nos. 171, 223.) 


516 From the process line engraving of Blum’s 
Mr. Jefferson as ‘*‘Bob Acres” in The Rivals tor 
Scribner’s Magazine, December 1880 


PENNELL AS ILLUSTRATOR 
JOSEPH PENNELL developed under much 
517 From the process line engraving of Pennell Wacken Cathedral from the the same influences as Blum, mastering 

Southeast for The Century Magazine, July 1889. © The Century Co. early the staccato pen drawing of Fortuny 
and Rico — the line that conveys with truth of form, truth of atmosphere. It was an ideal equipment for a 
sketcher of architectural sites, and Pennell soon made himself the leading illustrator of books of European 
travel, a position which he held through forty years of resourceful and varied endeavor until his death. Italy, 
France and England were his favorite sketching-grounds. His authors included Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, 
Henry James, W. D. Howells, Maurice Hewlett and his own talented wife. As the most universal craftsman 
of our times, Pennell essayed with distinction many mediums, the pen-line, chalk, monochrome wash and 
water color, but he seems at his best in those light webs and assemblages of dots with which his pen magically 
brings a noble building and its surroundings into being. Besides his European sketches Pennell was peculiarly 
happy in his representations of the spirit and form of the modern age of power and machinery. These sketches 
are a not unimportant part of the record of twentieth-century America. (See Nos. 437-38.) 


ILLUSTRATION 297 


PENNELL’S 
EARLIER 
STYLE 


PENNELL’s wash drawing, 
a beautiful early illustra- 
tion showing a distant 
view of Windsor Castle, 
is from one of Mrs. Pen- 
nell’s first serials, The 
Stream of Pleasure. It is 
among his most delightful 
creations. In later years 
Pennell’s illustration, now 
largely secondary to his 
work in etching and lith- 
ography, assumed a more 
grandiose form. Such 
books as Temples of Greece 
and The Wonder of Work 
represent this phase. It 
is immensely skillful and 
possibly less attractive 
than the intimate pen ™& SSE REE RT a Soe 

5 f 518 From Pennell’s Rainbow on the Thames for The Century Magazine, Aug. 1889, 
studies of his youth and white-line wood engraving by H. E. Sylvester. © The Century Co. 
prime. He wrote many useful books on all phases of modern graphic art and was a pungent and erratic 
critic. He gave himself unsparingly to teaching and arranging exhibitions, and probably paid for such self- 
sacrificing activities in a too early end. 


Pos 


WILLIAM T. SMEDLEY, N.A., S.A.A. 


Ovr four greatest illustrators, it will be noted, all worked 
practically outside of the illustrator’s normal task, that of 
depicting the social life of his own time and nation. This 
field was, however, ably cultivated by men who, without 
being precisely great technicians, were acute and sym- 
pathetic observers, and sufficiently gifted on the artistic 
side. Of the period dominated in fiction by W. D. 
Howells, W. T. Smedley was perhaps the most faithful 
illustrator. No one of his day created a greater gallery 
of nice unpretentious Americans, and his sense of the 
average social situation was inerrant. His was a quiet, 
unambitious, at times subhumorous art, but singularly 
complete within its elected frontiers. It is well represented 
by The Golden House. Smedley was born in Chester 
County, Pennsylvania, in 1858, trained at the Pennsyl- 
vania Academy and with Laurens at Paris, and died in 
New York in 1920. The same qualities that made him a 
resourceful inventor of types in illustration made him also 
a sterling portraitist. To run through a series of Smedley’s 
illustrations is to view again the round of genteel life in 
the eighteen nineties, that age a little more than a quarter 
of a century ago when industrialism had destroyed much 
of the peculiar charm of the civilization which preceded 
the Civil War but had not yet brought about the crystal- 


izati : ime when most of the abler 
519 From the half-tone reproduction otf Smedley’s wash dra’ ization of a new culture In a time e ost of t 


for The Golden House in Harper’s Magazine, Oct. 1894. 1 i n ar is was an nomal 3 
Harper & Bros. men were drawn into business an artist a y 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


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FREDERICK REMINGTON, A.N.A. 


In sharp contrast to these gentle social 
chroniclers is Frederick Remington, 
graphic eulogist of the cowboy and the 
bad man. Born in Canton, New York, 
in 1861, after a year at the Yale Art 
school he was driven West for his 
health. There he lived the life of the 
ranch and cattle range. With rare 
knowledge and gusto he revealed it in 
his sketches. Soon he became a 
favorite of the magazines, making 
many of his illustrations for the serial 
publication of Theodore Roosevelt’s 
books on the West. Remington also 
made fine models for bronze statuettes 
of the plains horsemen. The historical 
value of his work can hardly be over- 
estimated. He caught the spirit and 


} ~ _Remnuglan 
_ portrayed the aspect of the rough and 
ase « or e 522 From the process line engraving Dissolute Cow-punchers for The Century 
vigorous men of the Cow Country, Magazine, Oct. 1888. © The Century Co. 


the last and one of the most distinctive of American frontiers. He also did some illustrations of historical 
episodes. On the purely artistic side possibly Remington tried to tell too much and would have gained 
from a more economical method. He returned to the East very famous, but was granted only a few years in 


_ which to enjoy his prosperity, dying at Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1909. The Remington Memorial Museum, 


containing his Indian collection and many of his pictures and sculptures, was dedicated at Ogdensburg, 
New York, in 1923. (See also Vols. I and II.) 


CHARLES DANA GIBSON, A.N.A. 
Waite Remington was doing the man’s world 
of the Western plains, his younger friend, Charles 
Dana Gibson, was shrewdly studying the resorts 
of fashion. Gibson had the born illustrator’s 
gift of imposing his types. Those lithe, physically 
and morally well-groomed young men and women 
dominated the American eighteen nineties, and 
created their emulators in real life. With the 
eminently aristocratic idealism of the novels and 
short stories of his friend Richard Harding Davis, 
Gibson’s gallant sketches were in predestined 
accord, and the partnership produced some of 
the best work of both. It is clear that these 
graphic and literary creations, being almost in- 
credibly well set up, are an easy mark for the 
professional rowdyism of Scott Fitzgerald’s 
flappers and their sad young men. But in the 
long run any generation of youth might sensibly 
prefer to be commemorated by Gibson. He was 
born at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1867, and 
educated at the Art Students’ League. He soon 
passed from the illustration of fiction to social 
caricature of an effective sort for Ife, which he 


- Si 


_ 523 From the process line engraving of Gibson's Gy ee ae The Princess 
i eee ae, 189 © Baryon © Bro. was ultimately to edit and control. Cheap imi- 


tations of his manner by far less thoughtful illustrators have unduly diminished his vogue. In art there 
~ seems to be a kind of Gresham’s Law by which the debased currency drives out the good. (See Nos. 552-53.) 


XII—20 


300 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Arora 


524 From the half-tone reproduction of Clark’s illustration for A Lover of Music in Scribner's 
Magazine, April 1899. © Charles Scribner’s Sons, courtesy of Scribner's Magazine 


WALTER APPLETON CLARK 


Towarp the end of the century our fiction tended to overflow its traditional genteel barriers. Even earlier 


Miss Murfree’s Tennessee mountain novels had won 
favor, and soon there followed the New England stories 
of Mary Wilkins and Alice Brown, James Lane Allen’s 
Kentucky idyls, and Henry van Dyke’s studies of the 
Canadian habitant. All this called for a new sort of 
illustrator, one who had explored sympathetically our 
humble life. Among the best of the new type was 
Walter Appleton Clark. His illustrations recall some- 
thing of the seriousness and simplicity of the early 
Winslow Homers, if not their power. His talent was 
great and would undoubtedly have broadened with 
maturity. But Clark’s span of life was tragically 
short. Born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1876, 
and a pupil of Mowbray and Chase, he had only 
passed his brilliant pupilage when he died in 1906. 


F. WALTER TAYLOR 


From this point on indeed there seems to rule an un- 
happy destiny by which good illustrators either quit 
the art or die young. F. Walter Taylor belonged to 
the latter class. He was born at Philadelphia in 1874, 
studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and independ- 
ently abroad, dying in 1921. One of his best books 
is The Iron Woman by Margaret Deland. For her 
old-time tales her publishers usually called on Howard 
Pyle. For a modern novel of a unique type they 
wisely employed a new talent, and, as the illustration 
shows, Taylor acquitted himself ably of his task. 


525 From the half-tone reproduction of Taylor’s illustration for Delan' 


The Iron Woman, New York. 1911. 


© Harper & Bros. 


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302 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA z 


MAXFIELD PARRISH, N.A. 


Howarp Py ez and his pupils were 
the artists who designed most ably 
for color process. Among them Max- 
field Parrish has been most popular. 
He was born at Philadelphia in 1870, 
his father was Stephen Parrish, the — 
etcher. His very decorative art — 
grows out of the medizval phase of 
his master, Howard Pyle. Parrish, 
however, lacks the various and spe- 
cific quality of the born illustrator, 
hence is at his best with books which 
have no realistic reference. In Ken- 
neth Grahame’s Dream Days, Parrish 
found a fantasia after his own heart, 
and his illustrations for it show the 
artist in his most amiable mood; and — 
in his illustrations for The Arabian 
Nights’ Entertainments he has con- 
veyed the exotic imagery of oriental 
unreality. He has alsoillustrated The 
Knickerbocker History of New York — 
and Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas. 
His gift as a decorator has naturally — 
led him occasionally intomural paint- 
ing. Parrish has been skillful in— 
designing for the color processes, — 


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528 From the color half-tone after Parrish’s painting The Walls were as of Jasper from the block maker and the printer. 
for Grahame, Dream Days, New York, 1898. © Dodd Mead & Co. 


ELIZABETH SHIPPEN 
GREEN [ELLIOTT] 


Among the disciples of Howard 
Pyle who excelled in color illus- 
tration were three women, Violet 
Oakley, who has developed as a 
mural painter (No. 176), Jessie 
Willcox Smith and Elizabeth 
Shippen Green [Elliott]. All 
shared the perceptiveness and * 
seriousness of their master with 
much of his directness of ap- 
proach. We may represent a 
very agreeable class of illustra- 
tion which was largely for or 
about childhood by one of 
Mrs. Elliott’s early magazine 
plates, regretting that a fuller 
representation of this sort of 
work is forbidden by consider- Qjemseeeugemem 

ations of space. 529 From the color half-tone after Elizabeth Shippen Green’s drawing for 7'he Real Birthday 


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ALSIYHO YUHIGNVHO GYUVMOH 


304 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


532 From Glackens’ original crayon drawing Essex Street, New York, in the 
possession of the artist 


WILLIAM J. GLACKENS, A.N.A., 5.A.A. 


A postscript on the printed pictures that still 
count artistically cannot be a coherent one. It 
concerns chiefly the work of painters of talent 
who have broken with the old native tradition 
and have only incidentally been illustrators. 
Most of them derive from the powerful and 
summary tradition of Charles Keene, Daumier 
and Fora. As splendid sketches, their de- 
signs have offended against the habit of neatness 
and finish, and have repelled the public, to the 
public’s distinct loss. Prominent among these 
great unwanted illustrators is John Sloan, 
whose fine realistic designs are so well repre- 
sented under painting (No. 248) and graphic 
arts (Nos. 455, 555) that we need not repeat 
them here. The drawing by W. J. Glackens 
here reproduced is of the late eighteen nineties 
and leaves one marveling how an illustrator of 
this geniality and force was ever permitted to es- 
cape into painting. For the artist this may have 
been a good fortune; it was clearly a misfortune 
for the art of the printed picture among us. 


GEORGE BENJAMIN LUKS 


Tue racy and powerful talent of George B. Luks 
found an early outlet in political and social 
caricature; but the artist found it easier to 
disagree than to agree with his editors, and his 
subsequent success as a painter has made illus- 
tration only incidental in his work. In the 
international polo matches of 1914 Luks found 


a theme that lured him back. With the most admirable power and economy, he has found in scratches and 
blots of ink symbols for the onrush and even the character of struggling horses and men. The layman possibly 
may not realize how much the detail in work of this sort must be sacrificed to express the main impressions of 
motion and energy, and he may resent a sparseness of indications which an artist will find highly intelligent 
and expressive. But Luks has never bothered about the layman. (See Nos. 244-245.) 


533 From the process line engraving of Luks’ pen and ink drawing in Vanity Fair, July 1914, courtesy of the publishers 


(eo=:lUN!«, 


ILLUSTRATION 305 


A JOURNAL OF QUIET 
= ADVENTUREINALASKA 


BY ROCKWELL KENT 


534 From the process line engraving after Kent’s design for the book jacket of his 
Wilderness, New York, 1920. © G. P. Putnam’s Sons 


ROCKWELL KENT 


In contrast with the swift gusto of Glackens and Luks is the pondered design of Rockwell Kent. For the 
decoration of his books, Wilderness and Voyaging Southward, etc., he has renewed with greater austerity the 
heavy and decorative blacks of the old wood engravers, in a type of symbolic design quite his own. The design 
for the jacket of his first book well represents the largeness and simplicity of his style. “Essentials only ought 
to go into painting,” Kent insists. “I can’t trust my judgment; it’s only what remains in memory 
that I paint. ... I don’t want petty self-expression; I want the elemental, infinite thing; I want to 
paint the rhythm of eternity,” and in his Journal of Quiet Adventure he gives an insight into his approach. 
As a return to a typographically appropriate sort of illustration, Kent’s books are welcome. He is well 
represented by the end-papers within the covers of The Pageant of America. (See also Nos. 262, 471, 557.) 
There are other young designers who practice illustration of an informal sort very ably, but few of them 
have made any popular impression, while the youthfulness of most excludes them under the principle that no 
prudent historian tries to be absolutely contemporary. We leave American illustration in the paradoxical 
condition that with a daily deluge of printed pictures our best talent is unappreciated and virtually unem- 
ployed. Since we cannot hope that the flood of bad illustration will cease, we are driven to the hope that 
talent may arise which shall be able to cope with what to-day seem impossible conditions. Meanwhile, fine 
illustration will continue to be produced for the trained minority that wants it enough to support it. It 
remains only to treat very briefly the chapter on social and political caricature. 


CHAPTER XXII 


SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE 


INCE political and social caricature is freely represented in other volumes of this 
S series (Vols. VIII and IX) and since little of it has artistic merit, our treatment 
of the subject here should evidently be summary. Political caricature makes its 
appearance in America at the time of the Stamp Act and the Revolutionary War, but 


with negligible exceptions the pictorial broadsides in favor of the colonies were made in ~ 


London. The fight against the Federalists elicited from both parties a bitter and un- 
worthy type of caricature centering in the personalities of the period. Contemptible 
equally as art and as sentiment, it need not detain us. 


The War of 1812 arose in that confusion of counsels which is usually favorable to the — 
caricaturist, but no one was present to profit by the occasion except the Englishman, ~ 


William Charles, who came over versed in the gross methods of Gillray. His colored 
sheets are badly disfigured with inscriptions (see Vol. VIII) but he exulted over our naval 


victories and covered the British King and the New England pacifists with a coarse — 


mockery that won him favor. 


Little caricature of note was inspired by the Mexican and the Civil War, and that — 


little was a side issue of those indefatigable color-lithographers, Currier and Ives. Among ~ 


the scores of patriotic broadsides which they circulated, a handful of well-conceived and 
well-drawn sheets may be chosen — a pitifully small gleaning when one considers that 
such issues as slavery and secession were the topics. Before the end of the Civil War 
caricature was passing into the hands of the new weeklies, with Harper’s always in the 
lead. Thomas Nast, in the last years of the Civil War, inaugurated for Harper's Weekly 
a more powerful and thoughtful sort of political caricature which dominated our American 
school for a generation. Successively he attacked with reiterated, telling pen strokes the 
Democratic defeatists of 1864, the regiment of idealist fanatics that gathered in support 
of Horace Greeley’s candidacy in 1872, the Tweed Ring defiantly bloated with the plunder 
of New York City, and James G. Blaine with his public nickname of “the plumed 
Knight” and his private background of official venality. Such were Nast’s objectives; 
he stormed them all successfully. He was not merely our leading political caricaturist, 
but easily our greatest satirist, our literature never having produced his equal. 

Despite his Bavarian origin, Nast is in the best English tradition. The German type 
of caricature was introduced by the Viennese, Joseph Keppler, who in 1876 founded 
Puck and soon availed himself of color-lithography for its main cartoons. Puck was so 
discomforting a foe for the Republicans that they established a similar sheet, Judge. 
This had the disadvantage, from the point of view of political caricature, of being on the 
defensive, and it eventually turned over to social caricature. Puck and Judge moved 
pictorial humor from the private library to the railway train and the barber shop. Follow- 

306 


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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE 307 


ing Keppler’s German tradition, they cultivated a drollery of a quaint and genial and 
eminently popular ‘humor, dealing in democratic fashion with poor folks. Caricature 
in the British tradition had done that, but had shown the poor man as seen by the pros- 
perous man. ‘To show the poor man as he.sees himself was Joseph Keppler’s innovation, 
and a momentous one, for it established the tradition of social caricature which was to 
rule in the comic supplement of the Sunday newspapers. 

Toward the end of the century political caricature passed to the daily newspapers and 
for some fifteen years was largely concerned in one way or another with the agitation 
against the Trusts. Homer C. Davenport and F. B. Opper are the leading figures. The 
tradition remains that of the vigorous pen-draftsmanship of the English school. Next 
to Nast’s caricature, this is the most important we have produced, though such short- 
lived radical weeklies as the Verdict and the Masses maintained a much higher artistic 
level and introduced among us the brevity and seriousness of French caricature. 

Social caricature of a fashionable type was occasionally presented in the general 
weeklies. It found its proper organ in Life, and in the early eighteen nineties its most 
characteristic artist was Charles Dana Gibson. Its tradition in the main is that of 


London Punch. Of recent years, caricature of the more summary Continental fashion 


has been making its way, especially in those monthlies which, like Vanity Fair, exploit the 
ways of the rich for the edification of the poor rich. 

Reviewing the course of graphic art in America, it is clear that illustration alone 
has been the popular branch and clear, too, that, after its tentative beginnings, illustra- 
tion has very well done its work of mirroring its times. 

At the beginning of the second quarter of the twentieth century we find the art in 
confusion and at alow ebb. The causes of this are the enormous increase of the population 
and its growing diversity, the passing of illustration into the hands of the dailies and 
nation-wide weeklies which must set their standards low, while they impose a kind of 
quantity production upon an art that needs much study and reflection. Illustration, 
like so many other phases of American life, has been profoundly affected by the changed 
economic foundation of modern America. Quantity production, speed production, a 
feverish hurry that permeates all social groups, the aversion of the average American for 
leisurely contemplation, are all factors to which the artist must adjust himself. To sell 
his product he must rely upon the sure appeal of sentimentality, or upon a creation so 
striking that he who rushes from page to page of the news sheet or the popular magazine 
will pause for a moment. The very mixed character of his great public is not the least 
of his difficulties. He must please men and women of many occupations, many races 
and with diverse educational attainments. Only a prophet could tell if any improve- 
ment is in sight. Plainly the genteel school, that of the eighteen nineties, is on its last 
legs. Hoping for a democratic solution of a democratic predicament, I sometimes feel 
that the improvement may come through the illustration that is most alive in the sense of 
being wanted and rewarded — the illustration of the newspaper and of the periodical 
advertising sheet. It is possible that education will give the more favored newspaper 
illustrator of the future a better trained public, while he may develop technical resources 
to offset journalistic hurry and wretched printing. 


308 -THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


tp AR A TAD & 


Loading out Hands four round Drun the muddle Right and tft Miter 


535 From the etching Dottator et Lineator Loquitur in the Port Folio, Aug. 1817 


EARLY SOCIAL CARICATURE 


AT all times Americans have loved a joke, and the most persistent strain in our social caricature is that of 
quaint pictorial drollery. Thus in the Port Folio for 1817 a nameless humorist hits off schematically the 
ardors and humors of the social dance, anticipating methods 


familiar to-day in the comic strip. The visual joke is spiritedly 
told. 


MARKS AND REMARKS 


Six years later, in 1823, the Port Folio offers the prologue to a 
fight in a style so English that the youthful John Quidor (No. 
62) seems a likely guess for the artist. It is drawn with a 
raciness not so common at the time. 


AN EARLY 
DARLEY 
CARICATURE 


F. O. C. Darury, 
most universal of 
our early illustra- 
tors, naturally 
turned his hand 
now and then to 
caricature. We find 
him in young 
Donald G. Mit- : 
chell’s Lorgnette, 536 —- From the Port Folio, XV, 1823, etching 
with line engraving 

gently __ satirizing 

New York’s excessive lion-worship of the Hungarian refugees 
of the revolution of 1848. Incidentally, this is near the head of 
a long line of caricature dealing with the visiting or immigrant 
foreigner. In due course the negro, the German, the Irishman, 
THE HUNGARIANS. and the Jew were to receive similar attention from our carica- 
turists. Oddly the immigrants of Latin race have been largely 


537 From Darley’s The Hungartans for Mitchell, Lor- exempt from such raillery. (See also Nos. 409, 491-94.) 
in York, 1850, wood engraving by Jocelyn and 
+ Urce: 


fon: 
Bt cig ai nT 


SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE 309 


THOMAS WORTH _ {iii 


WAMU 
Hs 


Notuina changed much 
in our social caricature 
until after 1880. The 
tradition is on the whole 
English, allowances being 
made for the swifter and 
more explosive character 
of the American joke. 
Such monthliesas Harper’s 
and Scribner's regularly 
had a humorous depart- 
ment at the end; so did 
such weeklies as Frank 
Leslie's and Harper’s. 
Their contributors were 
shrewd observers of the 
American scene, but one 
feels that technically they 

THE BALL SEASON. 


ever kept their eyes on Youne Iiapy. “Oh, Horrors! We can never Ride in such a Disgusting Conveyance!” 
P: ra te ’ ‘. var : ing.” 
Lon don Pune h, an d the ROPRIETOR oF Coacu. ‘Well, Mum, yer see that’s the Worse of being Born to have’ the Best of Every Thing. 


. : 53 E é 7’s Weekly, F 
Graphic. When in 1876 8 From Worth’s caricature, for Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 20, 1869, engraving on wood 


the Austrian Joseph Keppler founded Puck, he inaugurated that broader pictorial humor which twenty years 
later was to become the staple of the Sunday supplement. Its roots are more German than English. Nothing 
in this period need long delay us. We have already seen the sterling humorist Augustus Hoppin on a 
Yankee theme (No. 415). Of New York life after the Civil War, Thomas Worth was one of the ablest 
chroniclers. In The Ball Season one senses 
something of the power and directness but 
not the economy of the great English hu- 
morist, Charles Keene. Worth explored 
low life as well as high, and is perhaps 
at his best when, as in the present in- 
stance, the two meet. A collection of his 
illustrations would constitute a very com- 
plete and faithful social history of New 
York during the “Black Walnut Era.” 


M. A. WOOLF 


M. A. Woo rF specialized on the rich theme 
of the Irish with notable success. His touch 
is drastic, and, except for what now seems 
overelaboration in his pen drawing, his 
+ Sis baat INT pictures would fit neatly into a Sunday 
i \;. wl } newspaper of to-day. Woolf capitalized 
| i an immigrant type that was conspicuous 
ee in the middle years of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. The Irish had begun coming in large 
numbers in the late “forties and early 
fifties. Together with their fellow immi- 
grants, the Germans, they contributed a 
\ IW picturesque element to mid-century Amer- 
——— ican life, which our illustrators were not 


A PROUD MOTHER. ° 
“ Arrah, that Child’s a thrue Mulligan. He laves his Book aud goes for the Jimmy-John as slow to deal with, often too harshly ; 


nat’ral as a Duck goes for the Wather.” 


539 From Woolf’s caricature for Harper's Weekly, Feb. 7, 1864, engraving on wood 


Wy 


ta 


\ 
\ \ 
YN 


310 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


Sa elles oases gh At! ck 


540 From Church's caricature for Harper’s Weekly, June 21, 1873, engraving on wood 


FREDERICK STUART CHURCH, N.A., S.A.A. 


Tue fantastic painter, F. S. Church, in illustration cultivated charmingly a realm in which drollery and 
poetry meet. His whimsically delicate vein is unique. One might call him a Lewis Carroll of illustration. 
Thoroughly characteristic is the scene in which the mosquitos organize and sharpen up their bills to martial 
music for their summer campaign. The conceit touches hands at one end with the drollery with which we 
began our survey (No. 535) and at the other with the ever-popular Krazy Kat. (See also No. 96.) 


CURRIER & IVES 


Untit Thomas Nast’s appearance in the middle of 
the Civil War, journalistic caricature plays little part 
in our politics. The coarsely colored lithograph which 
could be pinned or hung in places of public resort and 
was sure to catch the eye was preferred. It was, in- 
deed, a device well adapted to the small cities of the 
time, where many people lingered before relatively 
few shop windows, and a barber shop or a barroom 
might minister to a considerable part of the male 
population of a village. Chief makers of these colored 
cartoons were Currier & Ives, lithographers of New 
York, general purveyors of the cheaper sort of colored 
framing prints. Their political caricatures have been 
traced from 1856 to 1872. Most of them are poor 
enough as art, but many are effective topically and 
all are interesting as continuing the drastic English 
tradition. Usually they are heavily burdened with 
explanatory inscriptions. The publishers were con- 
sistently anti-democratic and anti-abolitionist — a 
position which offered some embarrassments. One 
of the really charming sheets is that of the presidential 
candidate Buchanan as a tailor deftly turning his 
coat for the nomination. We see him in a later sheet ne se 
(Vol. VIII, No. 741) uneasy behind one of the guns _ ASERVICEABLE GARMENT 


of Sumter beseeching Governor Pickens not to fire L OR AENERIE OF A SRO EER BE eae 


; ; 541 From a Currier & Ives lithograph, about 1856, 
until he himself gets out of office. in possession of the publishers 


? SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE 311 


a 3 T have pertect confidence 
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Awe SAMS peak se lity to You must daael did 


Creel gel somvbods ta 


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ee, 
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- ere Quine urn Mints =e Shas did beliare 1 wats 
Dhere ts nothing a ' 
teke having the 


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THE POLITICAL GYMNASIUM. 


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" 542 From a Currier & Ives lithograph, 1860, in the Library of Congress, Washington 
L 

: 

4 

« 


CIVIL WAR CARTOONS 

Linco. at this time is depicted as an uncouth railsplitter working for the negro. One cartoon shows him 
carried on his rail to the lunatic asylum, joyously followed by a very composite majority in which every sort 
of eccentric and fanatic is duly marked by his label. However, Currier & Ives were good Unionists, and their 
cartoons of the Confederate states madly chasing the “Secession Movement” over a cliff with breakers, duly 
labeled as such below, is one of the great prophetic posters and most spiritedly executed. Most of this work 
isanonymous. The political cartoonist as a personal force has not yet made his appearance. This interesting 

series ends in good-natured mockery of that most caricatured of presidential candidates, Horace Greeley. 


Go wt boys! Wellsoon \| Down with the Trion! ‘ S=a hy 
taste the sweets of secession) | Mississippi repudtates 
her bonds ceeROE : : 
f Sune Ay hy, nan ees We go thewhole hog.Old Hickory 
Bas) S ‘ ~ 3 ca > ts dead, and now well have tt. 
ts, 7 =e : 5 sion y 
We go it birnd, ~ Ser en Mey 
* A Cotton ts hing’! “ <> ; : , Ve 


: 
4 
2 


San Ae saad 


THE SECESSION MOVEMENT. 


543 From a Currier & Ives lithograph, about 1861, in the Library of Congress, Washington 


312 


544 From Nast’s cartoon A Group of Vultures. . 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


. “Let us 


Prey” for Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 23, 1871, engraving on 


wood 


THOMAS NAST 


PRoBABLY no political caricaturist anywhere has equaled 
Thomas Nast in swaying public opinion. From the defeat 
of Seymour by Grant in 1868 to that of Blaine by Cleveland 
in 1884, an astute sportsman could have known where not 
to lay his bet by simply asking whom Nast was attacking. 
His success was in the truest sense moral. He believed pro- 
foundly in his causes. He was only a fair draftsman, but 
his pen conveyed his scorn and indignation so that it became 
by an inevitable contagion everyman’s sentiment. At the 
height of the Anti-Tammany campaign, the spoilsmen 
threatened his life and offered him half a million dollars to 
drop caricature and live abroad. His power was both moral 
and intellectual. His symbols spoke the whole of a situa- 
tion. Many have passed into the standard pictography of 
our caricature — the ‘‘Full Dinner Pail,” the “Tammany 
Tiger,’ the ‘‘ Republican Elephant,” the “ Democratic Don- 
key.” Thomas Nast was born at Landau, Germany, in 1840 
and was brought to New York at six years of age. At fifteen, 
having had a few lessons at the National Academy school, he 
became a professional illustrator for Frank Leslie’s. At 
twenty he was sharing the hardships of Garibaldi’s last 
campaign and sending back his sketches to the New York 
Illustrated News. In 1862 he joined Harper’s Weekly; and 
though he had not achieved his ultimate skill, he fought 


effectually for the Union and victory, and poured contempt upon the Northern defeatists. Nast’s apogee was 
the overthrowing of the Tweed Ring that was cynically plundering New York. They depended on an easy 
popularity, and he made them hateful and contemptible. They even professed a préelection virtue, only to 
draw from Nast the tremendous cartoon A Group of Vultures. Nothing could have driven home more 
forcibly the uncleanness of the gang. . 


NAST’S BATTLE 
WITH TWEED 


On the eve of the critical elec- 
tion of 1871, Nast drew what is 
perhaps the greatest of all 
political cartoons, The Tam- 
many Tiger Loose, showing the 
beast about to tear the Re- 
public to shreds under the com- 
placent eye of “Emperor” 
Tweed. Thousands who saw it 
grimly decided to cage the 
Tiger, and they did so. Tweed 
and his associates fled the 
country, but not the pencil of 
Thomas Nast. Four years 
later, one of Nast’s cartoons 
was the occasion of William M. 
Tweed’s identification in Spain 
and of his delivery to the United 
States actually to wear the 


545 From Nast’ 


THE TAMMANY TIGER LOOSE—* What ave vou going to do about it?” 


s cartoon The Tammany Tiger Loose — ‘‘What are you going to do about it? ’’ tor 


Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 11, 1871, engraving on wood 


striped clothes of a convict in which the artist had so often prophetically depicted the boss. In Nast’s case 
the work of art was emphatically an act — often a formidably effective one. 


ry 

te 
é 

3 
a 


; SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE 313 


: THE CLOSE OF NAST’S CAREER 


Tue rest of Nast’s career is in a sense an aftermath of 
the Tammany campaign. He lacked causes of equal 
appeal. His imagination was still vivid, and his car- 
toon of our skeleton army, hobbled with political red 
tape, but with bayonet at the ready against the 
Indians, must be regarded as one of the great cartoons 
of the last century, so vivid, simple and just is the 
imagery. It actually helped to shame Congress into 
a more reasonable policy, and was the occasion of a 
tribute by army and navy officers to the artist. Nast 
was still to fight with the Independent Republicans 
against Blaine. Indeed, without Nast in opposition 
it is possible that Blaine would have been elected. 

At forty-eight Nast was finished and soon forgotten. 
He needed persons to attack, and the times provided 
only causes. Indeed, the importance of political cari- 
cature was passing. Parties were more scrupulous 
about their candidates, issues were rather of expedi- 
_ency than of morality. The stern joy of battle in 
which Nast had thriven was absent. He accepted a : a 
novel obscurity with philosophical resignation. icdnsgcetashd aca nauou'ec partner wee wih 
President Roosevelt found him a consulate at Guya- 546 From Nast’s cartoon for Harper's Weekly, Aug. 8, 1874, 
quil, Ecuador, where he died in 1902. baer Pee: 


a ee ae eee Te Pe Re a Ee 


PUCK CARTOONS 


Nast’s contemporaries and immediate successors need not long detain us. Perhaps the most influential was 
Joseph Keppler, for twenty years editor of Puck. He was born in Vienna in 1838 and died in New York in 
1894. By introducing color into caricature he set a durable precedent. On the whole, his editorial conduct 
of Puck was more important than his cartoons. He favored, against the neat and aristocratic caricature of 
London Punch, the rougher and more summary methods of Kladderadatsch and Fliegende Blatter, and also a 
broader and more popular humor. One may say that the modern comic strip in the dailies grows out of the 
tradition of Puck and its Republican rival Judge. Keppler’s cartoon on the Star Route plotters very well 
represents a certain subtlety in his methods. It seems a little infantile and obvious until one grasps the 
apostolic succession of 
public plunder exhibited 
on the platform and the 
expressive drawing of the 
dangling stuffed legs. For 
Puck, Bernard Gillam 
invented the symbol most 
cruelly damaging to Blaine 
—the “Tattooed Man,” 
— embroidering progres- 
sively upon the theme 
after the fashion of Nast. 
In the field of popular 
humor Puck’s best artist 
was F. B. Opper, one of 
whose amusing cartoons 
we are about to see. He 
was soon drawn out of a 
field in which he excelled 
into political caricature. 


i 


547 From Keppler’s cartoon Uncle Sam's Great Moral and Political Show for Puck, Nov. 23, 1881, 
lithograph in color 


ici inl 


314 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ey 


by Ca Peter PSR aE PEL 


niy Friese, % this AGmunutragan dragging ae? 1 anawer. toward the hideous and feighttal guif of rail abd thee & 


548 From Opper’s cartoon The County Fair Orator, etc., for Puck, Oct. 3, 1888, lithograph in color 


F. B. OPPER 


Berore the end of the century political caricature had passed into the hands of the dailies. The sole topic 
that still seems important was the fight against the trusts, involving W. J. Bryan’s repeated candidacies and, 
partially, Theodore Roosevelt’s. The issue was too unclear to serve a sincere caricaturist well, for the Demo- 
cratic party was never as a whole anticapitalistic, while the Progressive Republicans, at least ostensibly, 
were so. Nor was such a paper as the New York Journal really anticapitalistic either. Despite this atmos- 
phere of ambiguity and make-believe, such men as Homer C. Davenport and F. B. Opper made good play 
against the magnate and the trust. : 

Opper had been an admirable comic draftsman for Puck, and he carried some of his old methods to his 
new task. His theme was always the common people being outwitted by the Trusts. For his “common 
peepul” he invented a very engaging type — a little rotund, amiable, gullible man, trustfully accepting every — 
suggestion to his own disadvantage. It was very good fun, but it was poor political caricature. The average 
American does not recognize himself as a gull, and has small sympathy with the class. Opper’s personifica- 
tion of ‘The Interests” was that of a clever and genial confidence man. 


oe ae 


HOMER C. DAVENPORT 


Homer C. Davenport was nearer the great tradition of caricature when he depicted the trusts as a hairy 
troglodyte giant threatening the common man with despoilment 
or torture. The symbol did its work of making people hate the 
trusts, but, unlike Nast’s symbols, Davenport’s had the dis- 
advantage of being only half thought and really false. No in- 
telligent radical hated the trusts for their brute force; he hated 
them for their selfish cunning. Davenport’s hideous and hateful 
giant had nothing of this. What was really wanted was a symbol 
for a very powerful cunning, and the easy-going sportsman, 
Homer Davenport, was incapable of creating it. His energy 

. and gusto are well shown in the cartoon which represents the first 
| 11] i eeepc it J. P. Morgan superintending the removal of the statue of Wash- 
1 eames | ington from the Subtreasury steps to make place for the statue 
of the Republican boss Hanna. It is in a rich and joyous vein 


hil | {' ft}, 
| 
gt -- 


(Wg “) of burlesque, but as a political argument it was unbelievable. 


Mr. Davenport and his public knew that a banker as such was 
not a bad American, and also that Washington was a capitalist. 
In short, the antitrust campaign lacked lucidity and sincerity 
at all points, and the caricature it evoked, while very able, lacked 
that essential truthfulness which alone keeps caricature alive 
after its immediate occasion has passed. Davenport was born 
in Oregon in 1867, and before he died in 1912, only forty-five 
years old, he had seen American political caricature virtually 
Wall Sects New Guten disappear. His summary and powerful methods of pen drawing, 


54y From Davenport's cartoon Wall Street's New j i 7 
Yapyom ,Dayenport’s, cartoon Wall Street's New however, have been a valuable legacy to the social caricaturists. 


New York Public Library, after his pen-and-ink drawing 


315 


SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE 


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316 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


GIBSON’S MANNER 


Lirz developed many commentators and satirists on 
contemporary American society — Amos P. Mitchell, 
F. G. Atwood, Gray Parker, Henry W. McVickar; but 
C5 ig \ \ Charles Dana Gibson (No. 523) so dominates this class 
diy / i; ps that the survey may properly be limited to him. He is 
1), SN an alert and picturesque draftsman, with a sort of patri- 
cian gallantry both in his technique and point of view. 
His always fine sense of situation is suggested in the 
cartoon Botany in the Bowery, though a carping critic 
might complain that the little girl’s face and shoes are 
not of a piece. Aside from the invention of the “Gibson 
girl” and man, creations which made for a gilt-edged 
sort of righteousness more powerfully than many con- 
temporary sermons, Gibson was also an admirable in- 
ventor of middle-aged types. In several series, of which 
The Education of Mr. Pipp is best known, he uses these 
older folk as an effective foil to his supernal young men 
and maidens. Take the plate in which Mr. Pipp’s educa- 
tion pauses at grandfatherhood: how admirably it sug- 
gests an entire social stratum! It is easy to deride Gibson 
for his invariable elegance, but his representative value 
; BOTANY IN THE BOWERY is incontestable. He is the perfect celebrant of the young 
See er WO Sees generation that impartially adored Richard Harding 
ae Davis, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, 
552 From Gibson, New Cartoons, New York, 1916, after whose young women founded the college settlements and 
ab aiken Gulab spans ene oo | whose young men enlisted for the Cuban War. In his 
own sense Gibson was a true historian of his times; and if those times are now out, of favor, they may look 
better to the future historian than they do to the youth of to-day. 


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553 From The Education of Mr. Pipp, after Gibson’s pen-and-ink drawing. © Life Publishing Company 


SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CARICATURE | 317 


OLIVER HERFORD ie EMGESS EES 
Tue social importance of the comic strip is doubtless great, 
but its tedious and vulgar reiterations have nothing to do 
with art as the word has always been understood. It may 
rather be considered as a preventive of real social caricature, 
since it condemns excellent talents to its ritual of false em- 
phasis. From this point on there is little to arrest us. But 
Oliver Herford, developed with Life, has found his own 
very distinguished vein of poetic drollery in his alphabets 
of Animals and Celebrities. He has a decorative sense 
ordinarily denied to the illustrator, and his albums are per- 
haps our most satisfactory illustrated books of this century 
before the appearance of Rockwell Kent’s. 


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554 From Herford, illustration for An Alphabet of Celebrities, 
Boston, 1900, courtesy of Small Maynard & Company, Boston 


JOHN SLOAN 


A LITTLE before the World War, a new and more drastic 
illustration based on current French practice and on that 
of the Modernist German weekly, Jugend, began to assert, 
itself. Oddly enough, it was promoted by Vanity Fair, 
addressed to that considerable public which aspires to 
gentility, and by The Masses, addressed to a public com- 
mitted to the extermination of all gentility. This suggests 
that, both being outsiders, there may be a closer sympathy 
between the social climber and the radical than is usually 
imagined. The Masses, during its short life, was by far the 
ablest illustrated magazine in America. We reproduce a 
cover design by John Sloan which is amazing for its 
vitality, and may be regarded as an effective rebuke to 
the beauty-parlor girl on the cover of capitalistic maga- 
aul zines. (See Nos. 248, 455.) 

555 _ From Sloan’s cover design At the Top of the Swing for ARTHUR YOUNG 


The Masses, May 1913, half-tone in color after his crayon drawing 


SP a pee 


Tue mainstay of The Masses was Art Young, whose 
: powerful and highly inventive caricatures awakened sympathy for the life of the poor by simply revealing 
5. it with emphasis. Arthur Young was born in Stephenson County, Illinois, in 1866, and trained at Paris 
_ at Julian’s and with Bouguereau. Dur- 
7 ing this period of supervised work he 
z was forced, more or less, to accept the 
q media of conventional forms, which he dis- 


73 


carded quickly. His style is his own, 
immensely forceful and economical of 
means. This, and his keen sense for sig- 
nificant humor, make him easily our great- 
est caricaturist. His irresistibly comic 
vein could not be better represented than 
by our illustration. What makes his art 
great is its concentration both as thinking 


Si i a A ks en A el i i SN 


and as execution. He is at once very |. ae tneee een eee Seine 
1 4d i ict] 1 : “There you go! You're tired! Here I be a-standin’ over a hot stove lay, an’ you're 
serious and irresistibly droll, having that ee ee 


most precious gift of the illustrator, a 556 From Young’s A Bye oo Sewer a ane Masses, May 1913, 
> 2 after his crayon drawin 
spontaneous sense for a situation. M4 : 


318 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


From a wood engraving Filling the Treasure Chest by Rockwell Kent for an advertisement 
of Marcus & Company. 


1926, reproduced by permission 


ART AND THE ADVERTISER 


Looxk1ne into the future, there seems to be hope in the advertising pages of the magazines. Already the 
artistic interest of the average periodical shifts toward the advertising part. The illustrators for the 
letterpress may and do work by stale formulas; the designer of advertising cuts must think about his subject 
and is exposed to severe and well-informed criticism. Rather than express this hope too strongly, let me 
illustrate it from an especially fine design for advertising by Rockwell Kent which comes to hand just as 
I finish this long and deeply engrossing task. It surely suggests that there need be no derogation when dis- 
tinguishing talent lends itself to utilitarian ends. And it also suggests that in the imaginative interpretation 
of great business the illustrator may find new themes as suggestive esthetically as they are American. 


558 From the cartoon Printemps in One Hundred Cartoons 


by Cesare, Boston, 1916. 


© Small, Maynard & Company 


OSCAR CESARE 


Tue caricature of the Great War falls beyond our limit. It 
is too early justly to appraise it. 1 choose, however, Cesare’s 
Printemps which is remarkable alike for its imaginative 
power and as an example of caricature of general ideas. 
Cesare is never more commanding than when he passes be- 
yond chieftains and statesmen and attacks war itself. This 
grimmest of many grim sheets needs no comment of any 
sort. It is a consummate example of political caricature at 
its best. It shows a decline in the demand for political cari- 
cature when the highly intellectualized creations of a Cesare 
are within a decade of their creation more or less unavailable, 
while painters who have in a high degree the temperament 
for political cartoonists, men like Boardman Robinson, 
W. J. Glackens, George Luks, John Sloan, Guy Du Bois and 
Arthur Young, are in other pursuits. Perhaps it is all a 
matter of the lack of salient evil personalities in our public 
life. If we have bad men, they are little men. A caricaturist 
must have his villain, as a Frenchman must have his traitor. 
One cannot imagine a Daumier without his Louis-Philippe, 
or a Thomas Nast without his Tweed. Perhaps then we 
shall not again have great caricature until we once more 
have great villains — unless indeed there be a future in 
that caricature of general ideas which Cesare has so ably 
exemplified. 


‘ 
7. ee “ 


~ 


CHAPTER XXIII 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 


HE history of the rise and progress of musical art in the United States must be a 
story of assimilation rather than creation. The American people have no his- 
torical background, no foundation of homogeneous racial elements and geo- 

graphical environment on which a folk-music could be reared, no congeniality of thought, 
no original technical exploration and no inventions in forms or styles. The colonists 
brought their music with them; in later years the immigrants have done the same thing. 
In the beginning men were confronted by too many stern necessities to think of music as 
anything but an item in a religious service or a means of relaxation. When the art spirit 
in the young country began to find room to spread wings, it discovered its first freedom 
naturally in the realm of the written word. Music in the dawn of American statehood was 
subservient to the church, and psalm and hymn tunes exercised their sedate charms in 
companionship with tawdry secular texts. Concerts were given in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, but airs from Handel’s sacred oratorios, and violin solos of a rather primitive 
character figure prominently in the programs. 

In studying the programs of musical performance from the early years of our history 
to the contemporaneous period we are forced to the conclusion that our musical activity 
has been overwhelmingly assimilative and not creative. The features of our art naturally 
show a compound and sometimes confusing physiognomy of the races from which we are 
derived. But since systematic musical development was more mature and more easily 
accessible to us in Germany than elsewhere, we inevitably came under the influence of 
Teutonic form and style when we made our first adventure in the art of composition. 
This first masked and subsequently molded our impulses, a fact that helps to show why 
our real musical history is practically contemporaneous. Karl Bergmann, who stamped 
his individuality, German though it was, on the Philharmonic Society of New York, began 
his labors as conductor in 1866, and Leopold Damrosch, another German, founded the 
Symphony Society in 1878. American compositions were American only in the sense that 
they were made here. The teachings of European conservatories influenced our com- 


posers to embody their thoughts in the classic forms. It was imperative that the aspiring 


American musician should be able to write a good fugue and display an authoritative 
mastery of the sonata form. 

The receptive capacity of the people is still far ahead of the productive power of the 
composers. The melodic and harmonic idioms and the artistic objectives of the Modernists 
are wholly foreign to the natural musical inclinations of the American people; neverthe- 
less, such compositions as Stravinsky’s Le Chant du Rossignol and Le Sacre du Printemps 
command more consideration than music whose elements were selected from materials 
grown or at least domesticated in the United States. 

The factitious excitement aroused by every new departure in European musical art is 
only one more proof that the development of the art in this country has not yet found 
any definite line of progress. One can merely conjecture as to the probabilities of the 
direction which such a line may take. We have established a school of fiction which breathes 
the spirit of our national life, although its technique and its methods rest on European 
foundations. It may be that we shall rear our national school of music in a similar manner. 


319 


320 


Phalm. LXVIII. 


1. Tothe mayfter of the manfik, a palm == 
a fong,of David. 
2. ¥ ErGodarife, lethisenemies p= ——f==-==ssh=3 S=—— 
be fcartered:& they that hare, Ree ae — — 
him,flee from his face. waxe melted, at face of fyre: from face of God, {@ 
3. As imokeisdriven-away, fodrive #9=j=5== 53 
thou then: away :as wax is melted,at the = S=— ————————— 
face of fyrc:/olet the wicked perith, frO persfh the wicked. 
the face of God. 4. And let the juft-men joyfid be, 
_fhew they forth gladfomne, 


_ 4. And let the jult rejoyce, lecthem 2 
thew-gladfomnes, before the face of before the face of God; and let 
them joy Wah chearfulnes: 


God; & let them joy with rejoycing, 
: : es eee $. Sing yse to God,unto his name 


: Sing ye to God, fing-pfalm zo his , : 
AB Soheg Se eS ‘or him that Sing-pfalin: prepare the way, 


rideth in the deferts, in Jah hismame;ée fr "ve rata latent 
thew-gladnes before his face dootb ride, in bas name fab: 
ew-giaanes ‘ end gladnes {have before bes face. 
6. Heis afather of thefatherlefs,and ¢, Farber of fatberlef, 
ajudge of the widowes:everGod, ip the and Wwidowes judge: even God, Withes 
manfion of his holynes. his boly manfion is. 


7. God feats the de(slace, in how/e; 
brings forth thefe that are bound 
in chaynes: but the rebellious, 
dyvel in a barren-ground. 
& O God, beforethy peoples fnce, 
When forth thou rsadeft-Wway: 
whenin the defert-voildernes, 
thou marched/t-on Sela. 
9- Theearth did quake, heav'ns allo did 
. at face of God, de (full: 
Sinaé it felf, at face of God, 


7. God feateth,the folitarie,in howle; 
bringeth-forth thofe that are bound ia 
chaynes : but the rebellious,dwel wa 
drie-land. 

8. O God;when thou wenteft-forth, 
before thy people:whé thou marchedft, 
in the wildernes Selah. 

9. The eatth quaked,alfo the heavens 
dropped,atthe face of God:Sinai it felf, 
at the face of God; the God of Ifrael. 


10. Arayn of liberalities, thou didft the God of H{rael. 
fhake-out 8 God:thine inheritance whé 10. eran of iberalities, 
i Wes wearicd, thou did confirm it. 6 Gadibou didff omt-fheds 
thine heritage, thow didft confirm, 
when is Was Wearieds 
ux, Thy > § a. Thy 


_ From The Psalter prepared by Henry Ainsworth, Amsterdam, 1612, 
in the Dexter Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven 


EARLY CONCERT LIFE IN AMERICA 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN asserted in his autobiography 
that “Our People, having no public amusements to 
divert their attention from study, became better 
acquainted with books.” But in 1724 Philadelphia 
was permitted to see a rope-dancer, “Punch and Joan 
his. Wife,” a 
“Magic Lan- 
thorn” exhibi- 
tion, a “‘Cam- 


559 


WRITTEN by Mr. G47 

oe : wel ‘Tonbich sued Cee ee 
DVERTURE SCORE: | - 
And the MUSICK to cach SONG, 


> 


Friendship.’ 


setebaciny cote op 
*/ -MDCCLXY. 


Pace i 64. 


561 Title-page of John Gay’s The Beggar's 
Opera, London, 1728, performed in America 
1750-51, from the 1765 edition in the Library 
of Congress, Washington 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR PSALMS 


PROFESSOR WALDO SELDEN Pratt’s The Music of the 
Pilgrims gives us authoritative information about 
the psalter brought to Plymouth. It was that of 
Henry Ainsworth, published in Amsterdam in 1612. 
The melodies include some showing a syncopation 
similar to that now used in popular music, but it 
would be the highest extravagance of conjecture that 
could trace any connection between the two. Pro- 
fessor Pratt’s conclusion that the music had a certain 
vivacity and that the Pilgrim band contained not a 
few tolerable singers directs us toward one reason 
why secular words easily led some of these good 
psalm tunes astray in the course of time. 


CONCERT or CHURCH MUSIC, 


ILL be performed at Mr. Burns's 
Room, on Tuefday the oth of January, 1770. 
For the Benefit of Mr. TUCKEY. 

Firt Port, Some {eleé&t infrumental Pieces, chofen by 
the Gentlemen who are performers : Particolarly a Cone 
Caaroom the French Horn. By a Gentlemam juft are 
rived from Dublin. 

secoad Part. A SACRED ORATORIO, om the 
Prophecies concerning Ca ktsT, and hie Coming 3 being an 
Extra& from the late Mr Hanpat's GraanoOnaronio, 
stalled the Messran, coufifling of the Overture, and &acen 
ether Pieces, viz. Airs, Recitative: and Chorufes. 

Never performed in America. 

The Words of the Ont rons will be delivered gratis (00 
the Ladies and Genticmen) who are fed te paitionize 
and encourage this Conc gat, Oc may be purchaied of dds, 
Tmtey, by ochers for Gx Pence. 

Ayit is impr dible thy a Performance of this Sort can 
be varted on wrhour the kiad Affiauce of Gentleman, who 
are Levers ct Music and Performers on Inflruments y Bir, 
Texts will always gratefully aknowledge the Favous of the 
Ne eda eho aflt Lim. f ‘ 

C K ET Sto be had of Ma. Ti at cight Sdilli 
Gach. Lo begin paccucly as 6 apse! ce ete 


Announcement of a performance of Handel’s Messiah, 
from The New York Journal, Jan. 4, 1770 


560 


era Obscura and Microscope” and a musical clock with man and 
woman appearing as mountebanks; and in 1731 the Society of An- 
cient Britons celebrated St. David’s Day with “Musick, Mirth and — 
All of which we learn from Professor Robert Ruther- 
ford Drummond’s Early German Music in Philadelphia. 

The most exhaustive studies of our early musical activities are 
those made by Oscar G. Sonneck. In his Early Concert Life in America 
and his bibliography called Early Secular American Music, he has 
furnished the historian with material of priceless value. His collec- 
tion of programs of concerts, however, in New York, Charleston and 
other cities will satisfy us that music had no close relation to the 
life of the country. The airs of Handel and the symphonies of 
Stamitz and Haydn were not unheard, but the entertainments 
were manifestly planned without any artistic design and merely for 
diversion. It is equally beyond question that the colonists both 
North and South regarded music as a profession for persons beneath 
the rank of gentleman. 


a pe 


OT ee Tee ee 


‘MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 321 


THE ARISTOCRACY AND MUSIC 


Tue southern aristocracy practiced music, it is true, and the 
men could sing or play a little, but for them music was merely 
one of the several social graces. It seems, therefore, that it 
would be a waste of space to record the doings of the early 
concert givers. Their music was not American and their 
entertainments were arranged much as similar entertainments 
had been in London. There was probably a deeper musical 
life among the Moravians who settled in and around Bethlehem, 
Pennsylvania, where Haydn’s quartets were performed at least 
fifteen years before the composer’s death. But that musical 
life was exotic. It was Teutonic, not American, and apparently 
wrought no influence outside of its own neighborhood. 


MUSIC OF THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


Tue War of Independence naturally checked any possible 
progress which musical art might have made in the later years 
of the eighteenth century. Yet it was at this period that the 
first real American music was made. Francis Hopkinson, the dis- 
tinguished lawyer and publicist, and James Lyon divide the 
honor of heading the list of American composers. The former 
wrote The Temple of Minerva, performed in 1781, and a collec- 
tion of eight songs published in 1788. O. G. Sonneck in his mon- 


CIS 


562 Scene drawn by Francis Hayman for The Beggar's 
Opera, from the 1765 edition in the Library of Congress, 
Washington 


ograph on Hopkinson found his harmony faulty and his melody unoriginal, but felt that the songs had some 
grace and treated the texts respectfully. Lyon, a Presbyterian clergyman, was born at Newark, New Jersey, 


’ 4ymn G Myre 


er 


“a Y. 
ta tat 
[ae OAS TSR 
u 


563 A song from the Urania collection by James Lyon, Philadelphia, 1762, in the 
New York Public Library 


LOWELL MASON 


Lowre.tt Mason was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, in 1792 
and died in Orange, New Jersey, in 1872. At twenty-nine he ar- 
ranged a collection of church music for the Handel and Haydn 
Society of Boston and was presently appointed to take “general 
charge of music in the churches” of the city. As a teacher he 
adopted the Pestalozzian method and gave a powerful impetus to 
the growth of vocal music in New England. He established the 
Boston Academy of Music in 1832. His published works fill more 
than fifty volumes. It is doubtful, however, that he has any 


influence on present-day art. 


in 1735. He is noteworthy for writing 
the graduation ode in 1759 at Princeton 
and for editing the tune-book Urania 
which contains some original pieces. He 
received his Master’s degree at Princeton 
in 1762 and furnished for the commence- 
ment another composition. He wrote 
some other pieces, of which Sonneck re- 
gards his Hymn to Friendship as the best. 
He died at Machias, Maine, in 1794. 


564 Lowell Mason, 1792-1872, from a photo- 
graph in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge 


322 


eReREBAS LI 


THE 


Continental Warmony, 


oe CONTAINING, 


A Number of ANTHEMS, FUGES, and CHORUSSES, in feveral Parrs. 
NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED 


composeD BY WILLIAM BILLINGS, 


——_—- 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


WILLIAM BILLINGS 


In 1746 was born William Bill- 
ings, a native of Boston, a tanner 
and subsequently a teacher by 
trade, a prolific writer of psalms 
and a vigorous singer. He was 
the earliest American composer 


and he turned out a few tunes 
which became a part of the com- 
mon stock of the people. His 
compositions were not marked 
by high technical ability, but 
they were spirited and animated. 
Billings published, among other 
tune-books, the New England 
Psalm Singer, Boston, 1770. 


Autor of various Musio Boors, 


Pialia lazavii. 7. As well the Singersas the sapere en inftruments thsi be there. 
Pialm Ixviu. 25. The Siagers went before, the Players on inftraments followed after, amongft them were the Damfels. 
Luke zat. 40. I tell you that if thefe fhould hold thou peace, the itones would immediately cry out. 


Kev, xix. 3. And again they feid Alleluia. 
Come let us fing uote the Lord, Frameatt to weft his praife proclaim, 
: ‘ Fram pole fo pete extol his fame, 


And praile his name with one accerd, 
In th.s defign one chorus raile 5 fy fall echo.back his proife. 


Wublithed according to A& of Congrefs. 


PRINTED, Uymgeqbaly, tt BOSTON, 
sy ISAIAH SFHOMAS and EBENEZER T. ANDREWS, 
Sold at thelr Brokfore, No. 45. Newbury Street, by (aid Thomas in Woncustsn 5 aniby tne Boorsactans in Bosrom, and elfewhengens794- 
2 We et ats Fa ty dirt he'd Badly? Faas Stet rgS wh as bed CoH oF 
DET eee byt thet tbete op yecpemitiesrinneinissneteneiin 


DERES tt th 444 
Gobohonote 


565 Title-page from a collection of vocal music by William Billings, Boston, 1794, in the 
New York Public Library 


EARLY AMERICAN MUSICAL 
SOCIETIES 


Ir is almost fruitless to make a search of 
the scanty records of the early musical 
societies. There was an Orpheus Society 
in Charleston in 1772 and there were 
similar organizations in Fredericksburg, 
Virginia, Baltimore and Philadelphia in 
the later years of the eighteenth century. 
There were concerts in New York at least 
as far back as 1736 and the name of the 
Harmonic Society appears in advertise- 
ments of 1773. The Euterpean Society 
was perhaps the most important, but its 
claims to greatness have been undermined 
by the unearthing of a contemporary criti- 
cism declaring that the organization was 
composed of amateurs who met several times in a season and practiced instrumental music and subsequently 
gave a concert followed by a ball. The critic asserted that the ball was the principal entertainment. 

In short, the fragmentary details of American musical life, gathered with Herculean labor and scholarly 
judgment by Sonneck and one or two other writers, serve only to strengthen the conviction already ex- 
pressed that there was no genuine musical life among our 
people until about the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
when some of the elements of permanency and system are 
disclosed in the proceedings of musical organizations. The 
Euterpean Society had one merit: it was the ancestor of the 
New York Philharmonic Society, which was founded in 
1842 and now proudly wears the title of the oldest orchestra 
in the nation. New York had a Choral Society and later 
a Sacred Music Society. The latter performed The Messiah 
under Uriah C. Hill, one of the founders of the Philharmonic. 
Before that, the choral bodies had given disjointed pro- 
grams of ill-assorted solos and choral excerpts. The Plymouth 
Rock of choral music in America was undoubtedly the 

poston: Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, founded in 1815. 
1 ge ge nm The organization vainly invited Beethoven to compose a 
work especially for it, but the great master had commis- 
sions at home promising more speedy returns. 


566 The first Triennial Festival of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, 
ye a sketch by W. L. Champney in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 23, 


Old Golony Collection 


ANTHEMS. 


SELECTED AND PUBLISHED 


Under the particular Patronage and Direction of the Oro Coroxt Musicay Socisty in Plymouth County, and tbe 


Baxpev ax Harpw Society in Boston, 


VOL. L 


et EO 


567 ‘Title-page from the first Collection of Anthems published 
by the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston in 1818, in the 
New York Public Library 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 323 


THE CHORAL 
SOCIETIES OF THE 
MIDDLE WEST 


THE importance of choral 
development in Cincinnati, 
however, must not be 
underestimated. Its origin 
is lost in the obscurity of 
the early history of the city, 
‘ but before 1819 there was 
¥ some kind of choral body, 
from which sprang the 
> Haydn Society. The Eu- 
terpean Society, the Epis- 
copal Singing Society and 


other similar organizations 


iS followed. The Creation was 

; produced as early as 1853. ays ¢ 

: : In 1856 was founded the 568 The Cincinnati Opera Festival, ‘yam a sketch by H. F. Farny apes Weekly, Feb, 3, 1883 

: Cecilia Society, one of the 

a most potent musical influences of Cincinnati. The spread of the culture emanating from these various 
: sources finally caused the formation of the Festival Chorus Society, the bedrock of the famous Cincinnati 
° music festivals. This great chorus, founded in 1873, when the festivals began, numbered more than a thou- 


- sand singers drawn from some thirty-five or more local organizations throughout the nearby Western towns. 

The large percentage of Germans in the populations of Milwaukee and St. Louis made it inevitable that 
choral societies would flourish in these cities. St. Louis had choral bodies (not of German origin) as far back 
as 1840. It is unnecessary to enlarge the list further than to note that the practice of choral music traveled 
as far as the western coast where San Francisco possessed an oratorio society as early as 1860. What most 
impresses the observer of the activities of all these choral bodies is the complete want of any revelation of an 
individually American spirit. It is true that Dudley Buck’s The Light of Asia, 1885, was industriously re- 
hearsed and _per- 
formed in many 


569 Program of the Sev 
— By Choral Societies at Philadelphia, June 15, 1857, 
‘om a copy in the New York Public Library 


co} 


Geans Aubilce Gonrevd, 


ners ee 


ACADEMY OF MUSIC. 


Cie hd ler ard 


Excouted by all the Singers participating in the festival, and 
by an Orchestra of, 70 of the Rice babesice Vesiseacks Seve 


A inven te 


Conductor: Paor, P, M. WOLSIEFFER, 


Aven ans one 


PROGRAMME: . 


C, M. v, Wesrr, 
By the Orch 


entra. 
. Choral «(tod ix our doughty eastle wall” Lerner. 
me Sepa pene ee ee executed 
Singers com! 
. Chorus : — “(hitues" raat Ast, 
Executed by the ,,General Singers’ Union of 
. Tywa: — "The (7. Veal” 4 Orrto, 
With Instrumental OLS feemey by 
combi 


all the Singers 
. Chorwa— “On the Rhine” Kurkes, 
Executed by the General ra" Union of New York. 
6. Chorns:— *Ihe (ry tu arms” from the Prophet MziznnrEn. 
With Toutramentul-Accompaniment executed 
by all the Singers eambined. 
GOMD PART. 
+ Overture ia Lacener, 
By the Orchestra. f 
. Double-Chorus :—- ‘The strife of the Wine-Drinkers 
and Water-Drinkers” ZoELLNER, 


Exoouted by all the Singers combined, - 
. Scene and Chorus from the Upera of “Euryanthe” 
,Full well thou knowst ’. M, v, Werner, 


With Orchestra Accompaniment executed 
of Philadelphia, 


by the Singers 
4, Chorus: — “The American Patriot” Wotsikrrer. 


* With Orchestra Accompaniwent by 
bled. 


all the Bi: com! 
5. Sorenade : — “Why art thou so far" oae Manscunen, 
* _ Exeouted by the ,,Orpheas," Society tom. 
G6, Pilgrim's (‘horus from the pera of the “Tann- 
. hneuser.” — R, Waonzn, 
With Orchestra Accompaniment by 
all the Singers combined. 


cities, but so was 
Sir Arthur S. Sulli- 
van’s Golden Leg- 
end, 1886. The 
model of the Amer- 
ican choral society 
was the festival of 
the Three Choirs in 
England, and the 
music festivals 
which flourished in 
this country in the 
earlier years were 
faint echoes of 
those created by 
the land which 
never ceased to 
adore Handel and 
Mendelssohn. The 
influence of the 
British choral fes- 


enth National Jubilee Concert tival still continues 


to be felt. 


FIRST CONCERT. 


— 


Josepar FVENING, Mar pint, 


Quartet and Chorus, 
MRS. SMITH, MISS CARY, MR. VARLEY, ME. WHITNEY. 
Full Chorus, Organ and Orchestra, 


INTERMISSION. 


Symphony No. 5, C minor, (Op. 67.) - . , Beethoven. 


Allegro con brio, Andante con moto, Scherzo—Finale. 
ORCHESTRA, 


Concert Aria No. 3, Misero! O Sogno = 
MR. NELSON VARLEY, 


Chorus—The Heavens are Telling—Creation, « 
FULL CHORUS. 


For Description and Words of Masic, seepage 18 


570 Program of the first Cincinnati Festival conducted 
by Theodore Thomas, May 6, 1873, from a copy in the 
New York Public Library 


324 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


produced the first 
symphony of Brahms. 
Dr. Leopold Dam- 
rosch founded the 
New York Symphony 
Society in 1878. This 
is not to be a history 
of musical organiza- 
tions, however, and 
: 3 we pass to a mere 
571 Leopold Pamscaeh: 1832-85, from a zs note about the early 
Sa ae activities of other 
orchestral societies. The Boston Orchestra began its brilliant 
history in 1881 and the Chicago Orchestra ten years later. 
The Cincinnati Orchestra dates from 1895, that of Pitts- 
burgh from 1896. The Minneapolis Orchestra was created 
in 1905, the St. Louis in 1907, the San Francisco in 1911. 
The famous Philadelphia organization came into existence in 
1900. It is not necessary to catalogue all the other orchestras 
in the country, nor could such a catalogue be complete, since 
additional orchestras are rapidly appearmg. But one cannot 
omit mentioning the founding of Harvard University’s famous 
musical organization, the Pierian Sodality, in 1808. It is now 
the Harvard Orchestra and performs an important function in 
influencing the trend of collegiate musical ambitions. 


Programmes 


OF THE CONCERTS OF TIIE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETS 


. 
FIBST CONCERT ,—First Season. FESTIVAL CONCERT 4T C48STLE GARDEN. 


DEOBMBER. 7, 1842, 
PART I. 
Grand Symphony, in C Miner, . . Brrtnoves. 


Scena, from the Opera of Oberon, . : a nA Wrser, Overture, Zauberflite, . 


2 
MADAME orTo. Grand Aria, Op. Faliero, “a Tutto o or Morte,” v a Donizerr. 
Qui inD Minor, . Hewmev (First time in matepoe.) : 


Piano-Forte, Violin, Viola, Violoncello, and 1). oils Bass. 


Messrs, SCLARFENBERG, HILL, DERWORT, BOUCLER & ROSIER. Cones eS Mia 7 request) <a a hoje 


 SuRT nm. Grand Aria, Op. 1 Lombardi, “Non fu Sogno,” . . Vero:. 


Overture to Oberon, . Weber: 


CONDUCTED BY Ma. ETIENNE. Overture, Jubal, =.) se Weare. 


Duett, from the Opera of Armida, . 4 5 " Rossis1. 


MADAME OTTO & Mz. C. E. TORN. Beethoven's rt Ja tb in D Minor, No. 9, Op. 125, for: 


‘vena, from the Opera of Fidelio, .  % “ : Beetuoves 


fle chorus on Schiller’s ode “ To Joy.” (First 
Pua OTe HORN. time in America.) ¢ 
Soprann, MADAME OTTO. Alto, Mrs. BOULARD. 
Tenor, Mr. MUNSON, Bass, Mr. MAYER. 


dria Bravura, from the Opera of Belmont & Constantia, Movin 
MADAME OTTO, 


New Orerturc in D, . - . Fah) F ‘ Kaininops 
CONDUCTED BY Mr. TIMM. 


The Orchestra during the Vocal Music directed by LI. C. Timn. 


573 Programs of the Philharmonic Society of New York in 1842 and 1846, from copies in the New York Public Library 


Overture, Der Freischutz, . ;; -aaeee . Wenrr. 
CONDUCTED BY U. C. TLL. 7 Aria, “ Per questa fiamma,” e Domzerti. 


THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN ORCHESTRA 


Wirn the launching of these choral enterprises and the Phil- 
harmonic Society of New York the concert life of the United 
States assumed an artistic seriousness which it had previously 
wanted. In ten years the Philharmonic performed all of Bee- 
thoven’s symphonies except the first and fifth. There were fifty- 
three musicians, conducted by various members of the body in 
turn. The first permanent conductor was Karl Bergmann in 1866. 
He was especially energetic in placing the music of Wagner before 
his audiences. Theodore Thomas became conductor in 1877 and 


¢ 
oa 
bd 
i. 


572 Henry Lee Higginson, 1834-1919, founder of the 
Boston Symphony Orchestra, from the portrait by 
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) in the Harvard Union, 
Cambridge, Mass. 


MAY 20, 1846, 
PART I, 


‘Nias: “JULIA NoRTHALL. * 5 
Mozarr. 


MADAME OTTO, 


SIGNORA PICO.—Piano- Forte, Mr. BEAMES. 


PART II. 


va, closing with 4 solo voices and 


DIRECTOR of Ist part, Mr. U. C. HILL, 
“ 2d “ Mr, GEORGE LODER. 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 


CATALOGUE THE GROWTH OF 
Select Mufic forte Pi ano Forte MUSICAL CURIOSITY 


Sold at 32 Carrs Maufice! Repofitory Baltimore, J:Chalkt Philudelphis & J: Howitth NewYork During the nineteenth ven 
where may be hud in ioe plead in fingle NumberssTHE "8 tury the spread of musical 
MUSICAL JOURNAL viti 
5B: A Velame of the Mufical Journal is publifhed every winter by Subfcription in 94 week- activities throughout the 
~ly Nombers and jonable Songs and Peices car elected amd ar. } j 
“bea contain the moft fafhionsble Songs and Peii efully felected and United States was rapid 
and general. It was, how- 


ever, more vigorous than 


sere judicious. The composite 
eter Hor . and intellectually alert peo- 
ple of the country, impelled 

neces [vnceeeresds| epee by a curiosity insatiable as 


to all things new, absorbed 
music of every type and 


Ivigh ho uw ai 


(Tandets Ivtter to op 


Lavine interroge ‘4 ° 
Laces |g Stintn pete = every degree of profundity. 
ees: ~viwew|, | Ihe heterogeneous multi- 
tude which occupied our 575 Dudley Buck, 1839-1909, from a 
; z 7 photograph in the Harvard College 
Eos nites | as territory had no single  Mbrary, Cambridge 
racial affection or national prejudice. It cared not whether 
vo bari by alles ian music was written by Jew or Gentile, Frenchman, German or 


Zephyrs of the vernil | 3 


Greek. That the huge unsophisticated mass viewed any 
music with discernment or even an instinct for beauty can 
574 List of “fashionable” music from the 1801 edition of i ined. 1 1 
G) Gr giaghipnable”” music from the 1801 edition of hardly be imagined. For this reason, if for no other, the 
Public Library records show us that the various musical organizations 
all over the country were engaged in presenting works of settled repute rather than experimenting with those 


whose value they would have been unable to determine. The masterpieces of all countries were welcomed. 


in ae 


ar kT 


eee ry 


7 heer 


Pe a ee le 


Trlr Ny Se 


Long before Britain had perceived the lights of Tschaikowsky, César Franck, Vincent d’Indy and Richard 
That emotional music was in the ascendant is 
true, for to an uncultured public it makes a sure appeal. The subtleties of intellectual music are not for 


Strauss, they were well known in the United States. 


the inexpert. Brahms followed slowly in the tumult- 
uous wake of Tschaikowsky. At random one may 
select such a season as that of 1892-93. Allegheny, 
Pennsylvania, gave Max Bruch’s Frithjof and Gounod’s 
Le Redémption. Ann Arbor, Michigan, heard quartets 
by Beethoven, Schumann, Haydn and Grieg. Balti- 
more heard symphonies of Beethoven, Haydn and 
Mendelssohn. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a Bach 
town even then, heard the St. Matthew Passion. 
Buffalo had eight symphony concerts under John 
Lund. The Dayton, Ohio, Choral Society performed 
Gounod’s Mors et Vita, Handel’s Jubilate and the first 
part of Mendelssohn’s St. Paul. The Philharmonic 
Society of Des Moines gave The Messiah. The De- 
troit Symphony Orchestra had four concerts and 
played works of classic composers. Evanston, Illi- 
nois, had a series of chamber-music concerts and 
heard piano and violin sonatas of Beethoven and 
Handel. The Goshen, Indiana, Vocal Society gave 
Rossini’s Moses in Egypt, Flotow’s Martha, Bellini’s 
La Sonnambula and Handel’s Israel in Egypt, a liberal 
selection indeed. The Lincoln, Nebraska, Oratorio 
Society performed Handel’s Acis and Galatea and 
Mendelssohn’s Elijah. ‘Tiffin, Ohio, heard Elijah 
and The Messiah, and Salt Lake City enjoyed Dudley 
Buck’s The Light of Asia and Haydn’s The Creation. 


576 


t 


From the original score of Dudley Buck's Golden Legend, 
1880, in the Library of Congress, Washington 


326 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


CARNEGIE HALL 


RUSSIAN’ 


. SYMPHONY SOCIETY 
of New York 


= FOURTH SEASON 
gf MODEST ALTSCHULER . Conductor 


FOURTH CONCERT 


Thursday Evening. February 7, 1907 
At 8.15 o'clock 


SOLOIST 


pA FANMIE BLOOMFIELD-ZEISLER - Piane 


PROGRAM 

Parr I. 

1. Frest Symevony in C minor, Taneyeff 
I. Allegro Molto 
II. Adagio 
: S i@ : Pao. ae 5 i oie : =. Sa ; Ill. Scherzo—Vivace 
577 A Popular Concert in Tompkins Square, New York, from the drawing by 3 a pa 
T. de Thulstrup in Harper's Weekly, Sept. 12, 1891 Parr II. 


. a. Intermezzo “Night” (for strings) 
Napravnik 
b. La Coquette meget ce | 


NEW YORK AS A MUSICAL CLEARING HOUSE ly —-_¢. Cosack Dance (Humoresque) Soof 


AN attempt at directly educational concerts was made in New York with “> Pegrem contianed oe seed egy enemy 
the People’s Symphony Concerts, at which oral explanations of the ee 
compositions on the program were made by the conductor, Franz Arens. 
These concerts survived only as long as Arens succeeded in securing O78 te ee ee 
financial support for them. There was also for several seasons a Russian __¥°* Public Library 
Symphony Society, which produced numerous works of Russian composers, the majority of them unim- 
portant. But when all the other orchestras took Russian music as a matter of course into their repertories 
the mission of the Russian Symphony Society came to anend. It may be deduced, moreover, that New York, 
with its cumbrous mass of unassimilated nationalities, could not long support a specialized musical institution. 
The whole musical attitude of the metropolis has for many years lacked concentration and definiteness of 
view. Certain other cities, which centralize their enthusiasms on some one musical institution and surround 
its activities with the support of local pride, apparently exhibit keener artistic vision than New York. The 


metropolis, however, has become a musical clearing house. Performers coming from Europe usually land 


and begin their tours there. Thousands of aspirants from various parts of our country hasten to New York 
to make their débuts, hoping to flash through the land the news of metropolitan approval. Meanwhile, the 
nourishing of the soil in which love for music grows is carried on by the local musical organizations and the 
musical clubs in a thousand cities and towns. 


CHAMBER MUSIC 


Tue development of taste for chamber music had begun on the Eastern seaboard long before Evanston heard 
the Kreutzer sonata. Haydn’s quartets, as we have noted, were performed in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 
before the composer’s death. But these had little influence beyond the Lehigh valley. In 1843, U. C. Hill 
formed a quartet in New York, but this was 
a failure. Theodore Eisfeld (New York) or- 
ganized in 1851 a successful quartet. It was 
followed by the chamber-music concerts in- 
stituted by Karl Bergmann in 1855. In these 
the outstanding figures were Dr. William 
Mason, pianist, Theodore Thomas and the 
violinists Joseph Mosenthal and George 
Matzka. These concerts lasted until 1866. 
In Boston at this period was organized the 
famous old Mendelssohn Quintet, and in 1873 
the same city produced the Beethoven 
Quintet. In 1884, the Kneisel Quartet was 
created. Later came the Flonzaley Quartet. 


ve 


579 The Kneisel Quartet, organized 1884, from a photograph 


MUSICAL ART IN 


AMERICA 327 


H. F. Farny in Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 28, 1889 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL TASTE 


In the programs of the orchestras the development of musical taste may to a certain extent be traced. This 
is more liable to give dependable results in cities not yet brought under the domination of opera. Long 


devotion to the lyric drama almost blunts the musical 
perceptions of a community, chiefly by attracting and 
gaining the clamorous approval of thousands of people who 
are unfamiliar with the higher forms of orchestral or chamber 
music. But whereas in the earlier years of the great orches- 
tras one discerns much discretion in adventures into new 
fields, in recent seasons the leading organizations have not 
hesitated to open their gates to the preachers of all the 
latest doctrines in art. Karl Bergmann, who declared that 
if people did not like Wagner they must be compelled to 
hear him until they did, and Theodore Thomas, exciting 
fears of a Muscovite invasion when he introduced Tschai- 
kowsky to Steinway Hall, were explorers. In time they 
were followed by colonists in the new territories. 

The introduction of series of concerts for young people set 
another agency at work spreading interest in good music. 


Walter Damrosch began his symphony concerts for young 


people in 1897-98 and, in order to accommodate growing 
audiences, was obliged later to begin another series called 
Symphony Concerts for Children. In these entertainments 
explanatory talks play an important part. Other orchestras 
have followed the example of Dr. Damrosch’s organization 
and young people’s concerts are given now in several cities. 
Other influences in the development of public interest in 
musical art have been the establishment of courses in 
universities, the devoting of considerable space in daily 
newspapers to criticism of music and its’ performance, and the 
printing of numerous books designed to make musical works 
comprehensible to the general public. 


Se — 


581 Theodore Thomas, 1835-1905, famous conductor 
for forty years, from a photograph by Max Platz 


328 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


THE NATIONAL FEDERATION 
OF MUSICAL CLUBS 


A very powerful instrumentality in 
furthering the cause of music in the 
United States and a striking demon- 
stration of the widespread interest of 
the people in musical culture is the 
National Federation of Musical Clubs. 
The Federation has systematized the 
work carried on somewhat uncertainly 
by scattered clubs in the years before 
the union was formed. It has pre- 3 
scribed lines of study and has caused _ 
the preparation and publication of 
textbooks adapted to its work. The 
582 . Cast of Ralph Lyford’ SFC opera Castle ‘Spiaeeee as first given at Musical Dig est’s oe of the activi- 
Cincinnati, Apr. 29, 1926, by the National Federation of Musical Clubs ties of the Federation during the 
decade ending in 1924 revealed a most appreciable improvement of interest and encouragement along — 
all lines. The larger number of junior and senior clubs now organized has resulted in a growing demand ~ 4 
for concerts, a large increase in the size of audiences, and in the 
prices which they have been willing to pay at the box offices. A 
campaign of musical propaganda’ and publicity has been carried on 
in over five hundred newspapers, both to stimulate new interest 
and to preserve that already aroused. ‘The educational campaign 
has extended even to the Sunday schools. The Federation is bend- 
ing its efforts toward the production each year of an American opera 
with an American cast under an American director. 


OPERA IN AMERICA 


Tue history of opera in America and the disposition of the people 
of the United States toward it mene be made to fill a wee volume. 
But lyric drama has 
not become natural- 
ized. It is still a vis- 
iting alien, while the 
native-born opera 
continues to be 
almost negligible. 
Operatic perform- 
ances of a sporadic 
and certainly inferior 
type took place in 
wine ioss cereale the United States 
583 Sones eee popes: by William Dunlap before the middle 


and Benjamin Carr, from the 1796 edition in i 
the New York Public Library of the eighteenth 


ARCHERS, 


| MOUNT: AINEERS oF SWITZERLAND; : 
“IN OPERA. IN Tunes ATS, i 


| ae ghisasuia ax. 


THE OLD AMERICAN COMPANY, IN NEW-YORK, 
TO WRIEH Is uRjormED 
ABRIEF 


Ua aee ACCOU 


Fas 


century. Such 
pleasures as The Mock Doctor and The Beggar’s Opera were 
to be had at moderate prices. Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, 
called Mistress and Maid, was produced by a French 
company in Baltimore in 1790. Many operas in English 
were performed in New York before 1823; in 1796 or 
thirty-three years before Rossini’s William Tell, The 
Archers, or Mountaineers of Switzerland, book by William 
Dunlap, music by Benjamin Carr, was given. Some histo- 


rians regard this as the first American opera. 584A Song by Benjamin Garr, sung in The Archers, from 
the 1801 edition in the New York Public Library 


a 


ee 


Ye 


a ee Oe ee eee ee ee 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 329 


THE NEW ORLEANS OPERA 


Tue first operatic institution with 
promise of permanency was that of 
New Orleans. After several false 
starts its fortunes were finally estab- 
lished by John Davis, who built the 
Théatre d’Orléans in 1813. It was 
destroyed by fire four years afterward, 
but was promptly rebuilt. In this 
theater opera was performed three 
times a week by a real opera company, 
not by the actors who presented spoken 
dramas on the other nights. The New 


Be 


pera House of New 
1856, in the N’ 


Orleans opera had all the characteris- 585° The French O 
tics of a European institution and was 


Orleans, built in 1821, from a French print, 
ew York Public Library 


at all times from its inception to recent years distinctively a French lyric theater. Its achievements have been 
noteworthy and it can be said to have taken a position directly related to the musical life of the country 


at large. 


ITALIAN OPERA IN NEW YORK 


Tue introduction of Italian opera into 
the United States was accomplished by 
Manuel Garcia in 1825. At the Park 
Theater, New York, he produced Ros- 
sini’s Il Barbiere di Seviglia, Mozart’s 
Don Giovanni and several other works. 
Lorenzo da Ponte, librettist of Don 
Giovanni, was living in New York and his 
efforts resulted in the launching of some 
other operatic experiments, but the rec- 
ords tell us that the public was apathetic. 


586 The Park Theatre, first home of Italian opera in New York, engraving from 
a drawing in 1832 by H. Folsette 


and 


Da Ponte, however, refused to be beaten 


in the end got together support for 


the establishment of an Italian Opera House built at a cost of $150,000 in the downtown district. It was 


opened on November 18, 1833, just fifty years before the Metropolitan 
institution it bore one sorrowful resemblance: its first season was a 

After another unsuccessful season the house became a theater and 
Italian opera slept in New York for a decade. Then Ferdinand Palmo, 
a cook, built an opera-house and engaged a company containing some 
celebrated artists. His season opened in 1844, appropriately with 
T Puritani, and ended in sackcloth and ashes. Meanwhile, opera in 
English was frequently given in various theaters and the New Orleans 
company visited New York. But it was not until the erection of the Astor 
Place Opera House, opened in 1847, that New York adopted Italian opera 
as a permanent form of entertainment with persons of social eminence as 
its chief supporters. Even then the financial story was not encouraging 
and the new opera house presently became a theater. But the impulse 
which brought it into being survived and in 1854 the Academy of Music 
was opened with Max Maretzek as impresario. Of the long record of this 
once-famous home of Italian opera nothing need be said except that, until 
it outlived its usefulness, the house was the resort of society and the 
opera-loving masses. Foreign opera did not become fixed as a part of 
American life until the industrial revolution of the last half of the nine- 
teenth century had made us not only a wealthy but a markedly 
urban people. Opera seemed to follow the growth of the greater cities. 


Opera House, to which world-famous 
disastrous failure. 


587 Lorenzo da Ponte, 1749-1838, from a 
portrait in The Music of the Modern World, 
New York, 1895 


330 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


588 The Academy of Music, New York, built in 1854, from a photograph in the New York Historical Society 


THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE 


Tur Academy of Music had not enough boxes to hold all the members of the growing set and some of these 
persons determined that they must have an opera house of their own. They built the Metropolitan Opera 
House which began its first season in December, 1883, and ended it with a quarter of a million deficit. This 
emphatic failure of Italian opera in the new temple of the lyric drama led to the introduction of opera in 
German under the direction first of Leopold Damrosch and after his death of Anton Seidl. The intensely 
serious German style proved even less acceptable to New York than the Italian and a return to lyric drama 
in this language and French was effected with favorable results, caused undoubtedly by the assembly of one 
of the greatest companies ever brought together. In the course of the several seasons directed by Maurice 
Grau the opera-going public of New York was led to enjoy the masterpieces of French, Italian and German 
opera and the taste of the music lovers was greatly widened. Grau established the polyglot opera on a 
permanent basis in New York, but did not live to enjoy the full fruit of his labors. His health broke down in 
the season of 1902-03 and he was succeeded by Heinrich Conried, who carried on the enterprise on lines only 
slightly dissimilar to those of his predecessor. His principal achievements were the productions of Parsifal 
and Salome. Conried was succeeded by Giulio Gatti-Casazza in 1908. Andreas Dippel was associated 
with the direction for a short period. Operas in Italian, French and German fill the list of Gatti-Casazza’s 
productions. Like his predecessors, he has experimented with works by American composers, but without 
much encouragement from the public. In fact, it may be said that while the history of attempts at Amer- 
ican operas dates back at least to the “forties no native lyric drama remains to take its turn with Rzgoletto, 
Lucia di Lammermoor and Traviata. 

Opera in English is given from time to time and there have been some highly meritorious essays in this 
field. In the ’eighties the American (afterward National) Opera Company gave some very commendable 
performances under the baton of Theodore Thomas, but the venture could not gain permanency. The 
Century Opera Company also made a brave struggle in later years, but finally had to succumb. Of Oscar 
Hammerstein’s vigorous opposition to the Metropolitan with his brilliant seasons at the Manhattan Opera 
House the history has been admirably told in the late Henry E. Krehbiel’s Chapters of Opera. Hammer- 
stein’s most important contribution to the public enlightenment should be sought in his productions of pre- 
viously unknown French works and his engagements of singers trained in the Parisian school. This impresario 
made a vain attempt to place opera on a permanent footing in Philadelphia. An endeavor to create a Boston 
opera had also been made, but the institution perished from want of nourishment. 


331 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 


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332 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


OPERA AN EXOTIC 
AMONG ENGLISH- 
SPEAKING PEOPLES 


OrERA among English- 
speaking peoples has always 
been an exotic. It was an 
importation at first into all 
countries except Italy, for 
the claims of France to ante- 
cedence are at least debata- 
ble. For many years native 
opera in France battled 
desperately against the pop- 
ularity of the importation. 
: *, ; In England to-day Wagner 
o if foe 8 ers is the sovereign master. In 
uuteation The Opening NtsM of te Grand Opera Segson, Qrawing by ©: B.Ereveet | Geena 
most famous Teutons. But 
our composers, lacking the basis of a national folk-music and turning to the unoperatic materials offered by 
the Indian chant or the negro spiritual, have failed to discover that the vulnerable point in their system is a 
declamation in which the English tongue is forcibly married to the uncongenial Italian recitative. 

We are compelled furthermore to consider the attitude of the public trained to regard opera as a form of 
fashionable entertainment, not an art, and accustomed to listening to strange phrases delivered in a foreign 
language. The Italian and his fathers and his grandfathers have always heard the commonest utterances of 
their language sung in the lyric drama. When our opera-goers hear those of our language they are inclined to 
smile. Two persons melodiously saying “Good evening; good evening” seem absurd to them, while “Buona 
sera, buona sera” courts their ears with the charms of poetic 
mystery. The disposition of the public toward opera has 
powerfully aided the other factors in maintaining its exoticism. 
To-day the popularity of opera throughout the country is un- 
questionably spreading; but there is no tangible evidence that 
the people look upon it as an art-form. It is true that much 
excellent criticism of new works appears in various parts of the 
country and that an almost negligible minority discusses lyric 
dramas as art-creations; but from the Metropolitan Opera 
House to the Tivoli the vast majority of opera-goers are mere 
amusement seekers, to whom lyric dramas are valuable chiefly 
as materials for the supply of phonographic records. 


LP OLOZOZO OOOO DOR OZONG 


sMetropolitan Opera House, 5 


ABBEY, SCHOEFFEL & GRAU, Sole Lestses and Managers, 


} é Supplementary Season 
= GRAND OPERA 


Ise ORDER, ov %< 
nop HENRY E. ABBEY AND * MAURICE GRAU ¢ 


x. Wednesday Evening, April 25,% 


AT 8 O'CLOCK. 


THE INTERNATIONAL METROPOLITAN OPERA Pek 
MEANWHILE, this survey of the relation of opera to the life of S 
the people of the United States cannot be concluded without a 
reference to the apparent assumption of an international 
character by the Metropolitan Opera House. Puccini’s Girl 
of the Golden West had its first performance at this theater. The 
attainment of an international position by the Metropolitan 
might perhaps signify the existence of an artistic influence 
formed and supported by the New York public; but the fact 
that numerous operas received recently in Europe as of signal 
worth have not been and are not likely to be produced at the 
Metropolitan, suggests the possibility that the seemingly inter- 
national character is merely the result of Signor Puccin1’s rebel- 


lion against the treatment accorded to some of his productions 


° 592 Program for Faust at the Metropolitan Opera House 
by his own countrymen. in 1894, in the New York Public Library 


B WAGNER‘ -t.250 7c eee eee Sig. DE VASCHETT! £3 
JX ¢ AND 28 
OD FAUST......000eeecceseeeeee cose M. JEAN DE RESZKE Qos 
r Conductor. .........+2005 Sig. BEVIGNANI. 


ED) REGISSEUR «+40 eee eee eee ererees sine wie Mons. CasTELMany ASE 
Geto STAGE MANAGER 5): 0s open vinee nn eb ease WituraM Parry ¢ ioe 


eae #28 
Ky The Knabe Piano used at the Metropolitan Opera House anil 299 
S¢e by the Artists of the Company. eH : ao 

fa eS 
JX The New Pipe Organ, with Electric Action, was built by S281 
the Farrand & Votey Organ Co., New York and Detroit, AX; 

@ 
ec 


Prhacned 


ME a 


— ey 


et 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 333 


TRSR 5 —= aloe 2 
593 Scene in Fry’s opera Notre Dame de Paris as given at Philadelphia, from 594 John Knowles Paine, 1839-1906, from a 
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 28, 1864 photograph in the Harvard College Library, 


Cambridge = 


AMERICAN COMPOSERS 


AMERICAN composers are not without achievements. Enough has been said about the pioneers. The his- 
tories contain pages about Gottschalk, Lowell Mason, William H. Fry, Stephen Emery, George F. Bristow 
and other now forgotten but adventurous 
spirits. None of them affected the trend of 
: American music or left anything of more than 
‘ momentary worth. Fry’s Leonora, an opera 
: produced in 1845, had a passing success and 
5 perhaps lent some glamour to the creator's 
title of “First American Composer.” But it 
is not until we reach the period of the Harvard 
school, with Professor John Knowles Paine 
as its head and his pupils and followers as its 
body, that we come into contact with a clearly 
defined quantity of American composition. 
It has been defined as classic because it ad- 
hered to the laws and traditions of the German 
conservatories; but some of its members have 
survived to venture with discretion but with 
genial spirit into the land of romance and to 
_ speak the musical language of the less violent 
Modernists. 

Professor Paine, born in Portland, Maine, 
in 1839, wrote an opera entitled Azara, two 
symphonies, two symphonic poems, The 
Tempest, An Island Fantasy, an oratorio, 
St. Peter, and music to the Edipus Tyrannus 
of Sophocles. He left much music in smaller 
forms. None of his works occupy places in 
contemporaneous programs. His opera was 
never produced. Professor Paine’s force in our 
musical development was centered in his train- 
ing of young and vigorous native talents ae = 
which based their achievements on sound i hp eta md : 
academic traditions, the foundations of music. 55 21am, jhe crime Teri 1a the Harvard College Library, Cambridge 


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334 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


GEORGE WHITFIELD 
CHADWICK 


GEORGE WHITFIELD CHADwIckK, born 
in 1854, and at present director of the 
New England Conservatory of Music 
in Boston is the dean of American 
composers. He studied first at home 
and then for three years in Leipzig 
and Munich. His first work was 
written in the latter city and produced 
there. It was essentially classic in 
form and style and Mr. Chadwick’s 
music for some years continued to be 
built on German models. But he was 
not of the stationary type. The 
romantic spirit appealed to him and 
his music began slowly to emerge from 


the shadow of Teutonism; it basked in the sunlight of Irish folk-song and negro melody and eventually even 
began to frolic with the idioms of the Futurists. His Euterpe overture, 1904, shows the genial progress of his 
muse, while his Tam O’Shanter reveals him as a musical merrymaker and orchestral technician of high rank. 
The Americanism of Mr. Chadwick is disclosed in his facile assimilation of the best in foreign schools and his 
with his own individuality. His talent, though not averse to the smaller forms, is best 
the Yale Commencement Ode and the Phenix Expirans. His Ballad of 
A list of his more important works includes 


596 Home of the New England Conservatory of Music from 1882 to 1902, from 
King’s Hand Book of Boston, 1883 


ability to stamp it 
disclosed in his larger works, such as 
Trees and the Master is also a choral composition of great worth. 
Judith, opera, 1900; symphonies in C, B-flat 
and F, several overtures, Cleopatra, sym- 

phonic poem; piano quintet and five quartets; | Ta "Ors banter 
choral works, The Viking’s Last Voyage, | 2 
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MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 


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THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


ARTHUR FOOTE 


Artuur Foot, born in 1853, was also a pupil of Professor Paine 
and Stephen Emery, and is known as one of America’s foremost 
composers of instrumental music. His two trios, two quartets, 
and piano quintet, his serenade in E for strings, two orchestral 
suites, a prologue entitled Francesca da Rimini, as well as 


numerous excellent 
organ works, have 
created for Foote a 
high place in the 
esteem of music 
lovers. 

Foote is regarded 
as “‘the Nestor” of 
that group of living 
New England com- 
posers already 
mentioned in this 
chapter. 


601 Arthur Foote, from a photograph 


FREDERICK SHEPHERD CONVERSE 


FREDERICK S. CONVERSE, born in 1871, another of the Boston 
group, has contributed to the repertory of the orchestra The 
Mystic Trumpeter, Endymion’s Narrative, The Festival of Pan, 
Night and Day (two poems for piano and orchestra) and a 
symphony in D-minor. His opera, The Pipe of Desire, was 
produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910 after a 


602 Frederick 8. Converse, from a photograph 


Boston presentation in 1906. His second opera, The Sacrifice, was given by the Boston Opera Company in 
1911. He composed the music for the pageant and masque of St. Louis in 1914. He has written also chamber- 
music and some piano works. He is conceded to be among the foremost American composers because of the 


solidity and dignity of his principal works. 


603 The Stage-setting for The Sacrifice, Act I, performed at Boston, 1911, courtesy of F. S. Converse 


ming 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 337 


EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL 


In New York lived one of the leading figures of our native musical art, 
Edward Alexander MacDowell, who was born in 1861 and died in 1908. 
He studied abroad and had the friendship of Liszt, who gained for him 
European consideration. He lived for a time in Boston, but the latter 
years of his career were passed in New York where he was professor of 
music in Columbia University. There has been much discussion, some 
of it acrid, of the qualities of MacDowell’s music. It is unnecessary here 
to say more than that his place as one of the richest talents in American 
musical history cannot be questioned. His mental characteristics com- 
bine warm romanticism with a certain spiritual aloofness which kept 
him from receiving the magnetism of intellectual movements. 


MACDOWELL’S 
INDIAN SUITE -. gy: 


At the same time £ 
MacDowell’s pecul- 604 Edward Alexander MacDowell, 

. 5 acans 5 : after a photograph 

iar individuality 

gave to his creations a singular charm. Like some of 
his contemporaries among the painters and sculptors, 
he was influenced by the Indian background of America. 
His masterpiece is probably his Indian Suite, though 
his pianoforte sonatas, Eroica, Tragica and Keltic are 
more familiar to music lovers. His songs are admirable 
and his smaller piano pieces have large merits. His 
piano concertos are still played, and his symphonic 
poems, Hamlet, Ophelia and Launcelot and Elaine, are 
occasionally heard. MacDowell’s influence has been 
kept alive by composers who were his pupils at Co- 
lumbia University. 


605 From the original score of MacDowell’s Indian Suite, 1896, 
in the Library of Congress, Washington. © Breitkopf & Hartel, 
Leipzig, 1897 


HENRY KIMBALL HADLEY 


Henry K. Haptey, born in 1871, is one of the younger 
writers, and has composed numerous works which have been 
received with favor on both sides of the Atlantic. His sec- 
ond symphony won the Paderewski prize and that of the 
New England Conservatory in 1901, and his The Culprit 
Fay won the National Federation of Musical Clubs prize in 
1909. His first symphony was entitled Youth and Life, 
the second The Four Seasons, the fourth North, East, 
South, West. Salome and Lucifer, tone-poems, further re- 
veal his devotion to romantic ideals. He has written three 
operas, of which Cleopatra’s Night was produced at the 
Metropolitan Opera House. Hadley has conducted opera 
and concerts in Europe, was for a time conductor of the 
Seattle Orchestra, afterward of the San Francisco Or- 


chestra and in 1926 was associate conductor of the Phil- 606 From the original score of Hadley's Rhapsody he Culprit 
. : Fay in the Library of Congress, Washington. G, Schirmer 
harmonic Society of New York. iin 


THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


338 


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MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 339 


THE TWO CHIEF TRENDS IN sop 
AMERICAN MUSIC | tapghae OD 

Wuat may be called for the sake of classification Sie ees 
Americanism in music must be sought in the works of [ff 

two groups of writers. One group yields itself to the in- 

fluence of Dr. Antonin Dvofak’s opinion that the 

only basis for a distinctly American music was the 

negro melody, while the other discloses its American- 

ism rather in its whimsical humor and volatile fancy. 

In the former group may be placed Henry F. B. Gilbert, 
x John Powell and Rubin Goldmark, while the other 
includes John Alden Carpenter, Deems Taylor and 

Blair Fairchild. Charles Wakefield Cadman and 

Arthur Nevin have rested heavily on Indian music for 

their inspirations. Cadman’s one-act opera Shanewis 

was produced at the Metropolitan and Nevin’s Poia 

was first performed in Germany. The tendencies of 

the other musicians just named may be inferred 

from the titles of some of their works. Henry F. B. 

Gilbert has written a Comedy Overture on Negro 
Themes, a Negro Rhapsody (for orchestra) and The 

Dance in Place Congo, a ballet given at the Metro- 

4 politan. In a different vein is his symphonic prologue 
to J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea, produced at the 


MacDowell Festival, at Peterboro, New Hampshire, 609 From the original score of John Alden Carpenter’s On a Screen 
in’ 1914. Gold. in the Library of Congress, Washington. © G. Schirmer, 1916 


mark’s Requiem, 1919, and his Negro Rhapsody contrast with the 
Ode to Colorado and his A-major piano quartet, which won the 
Paderewski prize in 1910. John Powell has composed a Negro Rhap- 
sody and a sonata, Virginesque. John Alden Carpenter’s Adventures 


i. 


‘ in a Perambulator and Deems Taylor’s Through the Looking Glass are 
q two whimsical suites which promise to secure permanent places in 
: ‘the repertories of the country’s orchestras. Blair Fairchild has lived 
3 mostly in Paris and his works show the influence of the contempora- 
; neous French school. 


AMERICAN 
MUSIC IDEALISTIC 
THE music of the Amer- 
ican composers, viewed 
as a mass, is distin- 
guished by mastery of 
technique and form, by 
eee tetas Cotman, 1281--, sensitive fancy, warm, 

if not deep, feeling, and en ee 
by a constancy to high ideals. The want of nationalism in ¥ 
melodic idiom and rhythmic movement is of course due to 
the absence of a national folk-music. The utilization of the 
negro songs and spirituals as a basis for something distinc- 
tively American was inevitable and would have come even if 
Dvofak had never promulgated his theory or composed his 
symphony From the New World and his American quartet and 
quintet. The music of the Indians continues to be studied 
and to be a source of discussion, sometimes acrimonious. It is 


ee ae ae 


; 7 is Ti j j 611 From an Indian song by Cadman based on Omaha 
not very flexible as material, but is rich in suggestion. tribal melodies, © White-Smith Musle Pub. Co., 1909 


340 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


612 From a first edition of Stephen C. Foster’s Uncle 
Ned, 1848, in the New York Public Library 


THE INFLUENCE 
OF NEGRO MUSIC 


Lone before Dvorak’s 
day the slave-songs of 
the South furnished 
inspiration to Stephen 
C. Foster, whose Old 
Folks at Home, Massa’s 
in de Cold Ground, 
Nelly was a Lady, My 
Old Kentucky Home, 
Good Night, and Old 
Black Joe are so widely 
known and sung that 
loose writers sometimes 
call them “‘folk songs.” 

These songs have none S18 SePhenner 8 Dociserege 

of the characteristics of negro melody which have appealed 
most forcibly to the later writers. They lean rather toward 
the “spiritual” in their lachrymose sentiment and quickly 
uncovered emotions. The rhythmic snap which subsequently 
laid the foundations of ‘“‘ragtime” is absent from them, 
but is to be found in the negro compositions of Henry F. 
B. Gilbert, John Powell, Rubin Goldmark and others. 


MUSIC AND THE MELTING-POT 


Ir has already been asserted that the history of music in this country was a story of assimilation rather than 
creation, but it may be added now that the assimilation has been powerfully aided by resolute propagandism 
and unceasing education. Instruction may be obtained from the disposition of any public toward opera. 
New York City is a home for all nationalities and its opera house is its most frequented musical resort. When 
Chaliapin sings in Boris Godunov the theater contains hundreds of enthusiastic Russians. If Miss Bori 


AY? » Va ie 

614 A Concert by Gilmore’s Band in Madison Square Garden, 

from an illustration by W. T. Smedley in Harper's Weekly, 
June 20, 1891 


sings in Anima Allegra the Russians are all absent, and some 
scores of Spaniards appear. When Cavalleria Rusticana and 
Pagliacci are sung, the house is crowded with demonstrative 
Italians. The boxes on all occasions are occupied by “‘soci- 
ety” people who go to opera as they go to dances or dinners. 
If the observer seeks for evidence of complete assimilation 
in the concert hall, he will find that more than half of any 
audience is composed of persons who have plainly not yet 
felt the magic beat of the mysterious melting-pot. In short, 
the foreign-born citizen naturally goes to hear the kind of 
music he loved to hear when he was at home. And in order 
that the relation of music to the people of this country may 
be understood, it must be admitted that the foreigners of 
humble origin enjoy music which is viewed with hostility 
by the born Americans of a similar mental status. The 
encouraging feature of musical history in this country is the 
continued spread of interest in the art, but we must never 
lose sight of the vital fact that this interest works its way 
down from the top. This is perhaps the most striking aspect 
of American musical development. Perhaps one day we 
will bea nation whose song springs naturally from the 
common people. But aside from the cow punchers who 
rode the lonely plains there has been little ballad-making 
among us. 


Cer 2 eh OmR 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 341 


AMERICAN SONGS 


AMERICAN song writers have produced many 
beautiful melodies, such as The Rosary, which 
have become favorites. But these have in- eer 
variably been handed down from above. Pe Pinan tgs 


' Moreover, they have not become the univer- Cte ort S Shae te. 


sal property of the people. Our population 
is as yet too heterogeneous for that. Our A ee cs 
civilization offers so many pleasures like the ciao ere pee = 
picture palace, the dance, and the bridge 

table that there is little time for singing. Cer- 
tainly the conquest of the American home by 
our own songs would not readily bear com- 
parison with that of German homes by Das 
Veulchen and Der Erlkinig. The phonograph 
and the radio are helping the native lyrics to 
establish themselves among the people for 
whom they were composed and are adding 
substantially to the efforts of popular singers 
who specialize in songs with English texts. 
Efforts to develop community singing are 
also of great value. Perhaps we shall one 
day become more of a singing nation. Our 
songs too frequently lack characteristics which 
would mark them as products of American 
conditions. The majority of them are ob- 
viously machine-made and for that reason 
devoid of the living thrill without which no 

music conquers. O15) )> tom te oat coos of Ze Rosary by Rehelbert Nevin in th 


PATRIOTIC MUSIC 
Parrioric songs and airs should assuredly be a direct utterance of national feeling, yet the American who sets 
out to survey the field of patriotic music in his country cannot be overwhelmed with pride. The endless 
discussion about The Star-Spangled Banner, although that pompous utterance is the official national anthem 
of the government, is enough in itself to convince the disinterested 
observer that it has no powerful appeal to the national consciousness. 
The air originated in England, not America. The Marseillaise is strongly 
French in character and was born in France under stirring circum- 
stances. But on the whole the case of The Star-Spangled Banner is little 
worse than that of the Russian hymn or the Austrian. It differs in the 
one vital fact, that the people as a whole do not accept it. America, 
which so many declare to be our national hymn, is only American in 
its words, the tune is that of the British national hymn God Save 
the King. America The Beautiful, one of the best expressions of 
American sentiment and inspiration and popular in the United States 
during the World War, is another instance of adapting new words to 
an old air. Here the words by Katharine Lee Bates were set to the 
hymn Materna of Samuel A. Ward. The Civil War brought forth 
some fairly good songs, but these are sectional rather than national. 
They are, fortunately, mostly forgotten and should be. Reference has 
already been made to the most firmly established of our popular songs, 
namely, those composed by Stephen C. Foster (No. 612), but they 
too are sectional in feeling, for it is inconceivable that the native-born 
sons and daughters of Maine or Oregon can be deeply affected by 


otG Samvel Francis Smith, Aegean ad thoughts of an old Kentucky home or a master in the cold, cold ground. 


342 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


RAGTIME AND 
“JAZZ” 


THERE is, however, a 


Rhapsody In Blue 


Piano Solo for Jazz Band and Piano 


with 2nd plano type of music which has 


in score 


: GEORGE GERSHWIN actually conquered the 
=e country, namely, the so- 
called “‘jazz.”” Too much 
importance is attached to 
the vogue of this infec- 
tious expression of ex- 
uberance. The highly 
significant fact that it has 
superseded what was 
known as “ragtime” is 
generally overlooked. 
“Ragtime” and “jazz” 
are not identical. The 
former was distinguished 
by its characteristic use 
of syncopated. rhythm 
and was devoid of instru- 
mental peculiarities. The 
latter acquires its individ- 
uality chiefly from a 
capricious and frequently 
grotesque employment of 
the portamento and in- 
strumental effects, such 
as mutes of various kinds 
ranging from Derby hats 
to tin kettles. Expert jazz 


Molto mode rato (d=80) 4 


performers, like Ross Gor- 
man, have learned to dis- 
Copyright MCMXXV_ by HARMS Inc.,N.Y. y . if 
7206 International Copyright Secured i tort melodic sequence into 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Including public performance for profit = aeee 
irresistible burlesques on 


music. The portamento 


has become the common 


617 From a “ jazz'’ rhapsody ag pele ey ope and played by Paul Whiteman. property of trombones 


and reed instruments. 

The high period of “ragtime”’ was the decade before the World War. The prevalence of “jazz” has arisen 
since the conflict. The writer first heard ‘‘jazz” instrumentation while the war was in progress, when march- 
ing trombone-players made known to the public their peculiar tricks of portamento with the slide. Those who 
are familiar with the singing of negro male quartets know that their basses are fond of treating descending 
scale-passages in a manner resembling that of the military trombone-players just mentioned. In other words, 
it might not be impossible to establish an Afro-American relationship between the origins of “ragtime” 
and “‘jazz.’”’ As negro melody has always had an especial charm for Americans it seems likely that any 
exaggeration of its characteristics leaning toward burlesque would appeal to the American sense of humor. 

We must ask the reader to consider how much of American individuality has been found in the mass of 
compositions put forth by native-born writers and how closely and intimately it has brought itself into rela- 
tion with the artistic feeling of the public. We are obliged to note that no people as a whole rises to an ap- 
preciation of the higher forms of music, but the appeal of such forms is surely wider when the materials of 
which they are built are fashioned by the hands of the people themselves. No one can doubt that the music 
of Albeniz and Granados makes itself loved by Spaniards more easily than that of Brahms or that Russians 
gather to their hearts the symphonies of Tschaikowsky and the operas of Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. 


+o. 


MUSICAL ART IN AMERICA 343 


CONTEMPORARY POPULAR MUSIC 


THE want of permanence in the popular music of to-day is so 
easily demonstrated that no space need be devoted to it. The 
most casual observer cannot fail to perceive that the prevailing 
songs, which are mostly planned to serve also as dance-music, 
are quite devoid of the traits of the old ragtime and equally of 
the negro melody. It must not be regarded as irreverent to say 
that they more nearly resemble the emotional hymns heard in 
revival services. To classify them as ‘“‘jazz”’ shows that the 
term has lost its original meaning. The reason for the appeal 
of such music lies on the surface and need not be discussed. The 
mere record is all that is required here. 

At the end of the way we find ourselves confronted by a single 
conclusion, whose significance is by no means clearly definable. 
The people of the United States possess no genuine national 
music created by themselves, but have adopted a type which 
none the less expresses their ebullience, their nervous energy 
and their aversion to artistic solemnities. That any enduring 
form of art can be reared on this music as a foundation seems at 
least to be questionable. The most important demonstration 
of its possibilities is that made by Paul Whiteman, a conductor 618 . Paul Whiteman, Teegeherimant of “jazz” 
of dance music in New York. Whiteman has given concerts SE a 
designed to show the progress and development of ‘‘jazz”’ from its crudest early form to that of an ambitious 
rhapsody for piano and orchestra composed by George Gershwin. These concerts indicated the resources of 
the “jazz” band rather more clearly than the promise of the music itself. 


AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC 


Ir it is true that the musical history of the country is one 
rather of assimilation than creation, it may at least be added 
that the assimilative powers of the people have responded much 
more actively to the attractions of the Afro-American music 
and its derivatives than to those of European artists and their 
disciples. But this was inevitable. In spite of the fact that 
we are a nation of conglomerate development, containing 
elements drawn from all the rest of the world, we have never- 
theless a certain national character, and, except among primi- 
tive races, such a character rarely exists without an appetite 
for its own music. One of the most curious aspects of American 
history is to be found in the fact that the race whose individ- 
uals were brought to American shores as slaves and whose 
descendants have never been granted equality by their white 
neighbors, have given us our only distinctive native music. 
The only music that has come up from among our people is 
the Afro-American. It has the traits of a true folk-music. It 
is of the people, by the people, for the people. Speculation 
should not enter intoa consideration of the musical development 
of the United States, but one is impelled to wonder what 
would have been the grade of popular music produced by our 
people if they had enjoyed the racial background of the Rus- 
sians or the Germans. The prevalence of “ragtime” before 
the World War and “‘jazz’’ afterward has demonstrated, be- 
yond doubt, that the musical taste of our countrymen is not 
deeply influenced by the labors of benefactors or orchestras, 


619 From the original score of the negro spiritual My the propaganda of music clubs or even the work of supervisors 


; dy, arranged by H. T. Burleigh. © G. Spe “ 
Ricordi &Co. inc, 1017 of music in public schools. 


344 THE PAGEANT OF AMERICA 


620 A Concert at Lewisohn Stadium, College of the City of New York. © Empire Photographers, 1924 


THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN MUSIC 


THE present state of artistic composition in this country suggests the likelihood that it will advance along 
lines similar to those followed by the popular music. Without enslaving itself to the idioms and forms of the 
Afro-American folk song and equally without prostrating its spirit before the altars of either the European 
nationalists or modernists, it will seek to express the soul of its own people. Henry Hadley’s North, East, 
South, West was a deliberate essay in this direction, and his employment of certain familiar melodic idioms 
was for the purpose of delineating certain sections. Goldmark’s Requiem (suggested by Lincoln’s Gettysburg 
Address) and Ernest Schelling’s Victory Ball were other efforts in the same line. What the activities of musi- 
cal organizations will yet bring forth cannot be conjectured. 

Still another view of the historical line of movement is necessary. It is only in countries where the musical 
impulse is deeply imbedded in the national life that composers can carry on their work regardless of political 
upheavals and international conflicts. Among the Germans, Bach, the recluse musician, could live wholly 
absorbed in his duties as organist and choir master of the Thomas Church in Leipzig and unconsciously 
creating masterpieces of ecclesiastical music which in no way reflected the agitated spirit of the time. It 
calls for no unusual imagination to picture what might have been the trend of the tonal art if Bach, the most 
powerful individual influence it has ever felt, had plunged into the vortex of the time and given his mighty 
soul to the production of odes to the monarch or martial oratorios celebrating the Lord as a man of war. 

Lacking such a transcendent genius as Bach, we possessed in our earliest days a few church writers whose 
inspiration might have been the Roundhead’s surly hymn immortalized by Tennyson. The struggle for 
independence almost obliterated the infant musical life of the people. We did not produce a revolutionary 
anthem, as France did in the Marseillaise, because we had no national musical foundation for one. The years 
succeeding the Revolution were crowded with political events which held the minds of the people distant from 
considerations of art. The Mexican War, which now seems a matter of small moment, loomed larger in its 
own day, and when Jefferson was a decaying force but not yet a dead apostle, possibly more thousands of 
Americans were interested in the Missouri Compromise than we can realize now. There were some indi- 
cations of a stirring of the feeble musical spirit in the shadowed years before the Civil War. But it was not 
till the dust of fratricidal battles had begun to settle that the great musical organizations of this country lifted 
their standards and began to approach a prominence that entitled them to the daily observation of the 
newspapers East and West. At the present time European visitors are fond of telling us that we are a 
uation of idealists, which is indisputably true. But they do not often inform us just what our ideals are. 
We may without fear of offending ourselves admit that in the tempestuous 1849 period most of us were as 
interested in the Golden Calf as we are to-day, and that for many years after 1849 we were by sheer force of 
circumstances engaged in the solution of material problems. The splendid era of western development was 
one of the proudest and most brilliant chapters in our history, but it furnished no nurture for the growth of 
musical art. Every American realizes now that the pioneers had no time to stop to write stories and poems, 
paint pictures or compose sonatas. But they left us imperishable records which may serve as inspiration to all 
the creative genius of our future. 


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INDEX 


Titles of books under authors and of music under composers, are in italics; titles of paintings and illustrations under 


artists are in 


AxsBeEy, Edwin A., as mural painter, 105, 106; ‘Oath of 
Knighthood,” 105; “Science revealing the Treasures,” 
106; as illustrator, 289, 295; ‘Old Deacon’s Lament,” 
“Old Songs,” 295. 

Academy of Fine Arts, New York, 16. 

Academy of Music, New York, opera in, 329; view, 330. 

Adams, Herbert, as sculptor, “‘Primavera,’’ 200. 

Adams, John, Copley’s portrait, 5; Trumbull’s miniature, 
23. f 

Adams, Joseph A., as wood engraver, “Casting Children 
into the Nile,’’ 245. 

Adams, Wayman, as portraitist, 139, 176; “Joseph 
Pennell,” 176. 

Advertising, illustrative, 318. 

Ainsworth, Henry, The Psalter, 320. 

Aitken, Robert I., Dickinson’s portrait, 176; as sculptor, 
“Fountain of Earth,” 219. 

Albany Institute, material from, 88. 

Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, material from, 78. 

Alexander, Cosmo, and Stuart, 18. 

Alexander, John W., as mural painter, “‘ Picture-Writing,” 
106; as figure painter, “Ray of Sunlight,’ 140. 

Allston, Washington, as portraitist, ‘Self-Portrait,’ 22; 
as historical painter, 30, 32; “‘Prophet Jeremiah,” 32. 

American Art Review, 237, 238, 257. 

American Baptist Publication Society, woodcuts, 282, 283. 

American Landscape, 234. 

American Revolution, historical paintings, 33, 35; and 
sculpture, 195; engravings, 227, 233, 239; and music, 
321. 

American Tract Society, woodcuts, 283. 

Analectic Magazine, 242. 

Anderson, Alexander, as wood engraver, 244, 245; “ Water 
Fowl,” 244; “Title-page,” 245; Wood Engraving, 245. 

André, John, print on capture, 233. 

Andrews, Joseph, “Spring of Life,’”’ 281. 

Annin, P. F., as wood engraver, “Island Home,” 248. 

Anthony, A. V.S., as wood engraver, 248, 286-288. 

Anthony and Davis, engravers, 287. 

Apollo Association, 16. 

Appellate Court, New York City, material from, 104, 
108. 

Appleton’s Journal, illustration, 289. 

Aquatint, process, 224; examples, 240, 241, 269. 

Arens, Franz, as musician, 326. 

Arms, John T., as etcher, 265. 

Art, attributes, 1; American spirit, 1, 3; reasons for slow 
development of American, 1-3; postbellum conditions, 
51, 65. 

Art Bulletin, 236. 

Art collections, beginning, 16. 

Art societies, beginning, 16. 

Art Union, New York, 16, 236. 

Arundel; Earls of, and art, 4. 

Asbury, Francis, Lukeman’s statue, 213. 

Audubon, John J., Birds of America, 241. 


quotation marks. 


Bacuer, Otto H., as etcher, ‘Three Ships,’’ 259. 

Baker, Horace, as wood engraver, ‘Three Golden Apples,’ 
Q45. 

Ball, E. H., “Spring of Life,” 281. 

Ball, Thomas, as sculptor, 180, 185; “Emancipation 
Group,” 185. 

Baltimore Court House, material from, 104. 

Barnard, George G., as sculptor, 190, 205, 206; ‘‘Rising 
Woman,” 205; ‘‘ Hewer,”’ 206. 

Barnhorn, Clement J., as sculptor, “Madonna,” 199. 

Bartlett, Frederic C., as mural painter, “‘Great Wall of 
China,” 112. 

Bartlett, Paul W., as sculptor, 190, 206; “‘ Lafayette,” 206. 

Bates, Katharine L., as author, 341, 

Beach, Amy M. C., as musician, 338; portrait, 338. 

Beach, Chester, as sculptor, “Wave Head,” 220. 

Beal, Gifford, as Luminist, “‘ Puff of Smoke,” 136. 

Beal, Reynolds, as marine painter, “‘Southern Seas,” 135. 

Beaux, Cecilia, as portraitist, ‘Girl in White,” 146. 

Beckwith, J. Carroll, as portraitist, ‘‘Authoress,” 94. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, Ward’s statue, 188. 

Beethoven Quintet, 326. 

Bellows, George W., as figure painter, 139, 153, 154; 
“A Stag at Sharkey’s,” 153; “‘Eleanor, Jean and Anna,” 
154; as lithographer, “Studio,” 272. 

Benbridge, Henry, as portraitist, “Gordon Family,” 15. 

Bennett, William J., engraver in aquatint, 240. 

Benson, Frank W., as still-life painter, “Silver Screen,” 
120; as portraitist, “My Daughter Elizabeth,” 149; 
war pictures, 151; as etcher, “ Hovering Geese,” 267. 

Benson, Robert, Trumbull’s portrait, 21. 

Bergmann, Karl, as musician, 324, 326, 327. 

Berkeley, George, Smibert’s painting of family, 9. 

Betts, Louis, as portraitist, 139. 

Bierstadt, Albert, as landscapist, 42, 47, 48; “Mount 
Corcoran,” 48. 

Billings, Hammatt, “Three Golden Apples,” 245; as 
illustrator, 285. 

Billings, William, as musician, Continental Harmony, 322. 

Birch, Thomas, ‘United States and Macedonian,” 233. 

Birch, William, as engraver, ““Sedgley,”’ Country Seats, 230. 

Bird, Arthur, as musician, 338. 

Bitter, Karl, as sculptor, 208, 209; ‘“‘Pruning the Vine,” 
208; ‘‘ Abundance,” 209. 

Blakelock, Ralph, as visionary, 59, 63, 64; “Pipe Dance,” 

63; “ Brook by Moonlight,” 64. 

Blashfield, Edwin H., as mural painter, “Power of the 
Law,”’ 104; mosaic, 115. 

Blum, Robert F., as mural painter, ‘Moods of Music,” 
109; as figure painter, “Venetian Lacemakers,” 140; 
as etcher, “Busy Hands,”’ 262; as illustrator, “Ameya,” 
“Bob Acres,” 296. 

Bohm, Max, as mural painter, 111. 

Boone, Daniel, Longacre’s engraving, 231. 

Borglum, Gutzon, as sculptor, “Flyer,” 209. 

Borglum, Solon H., as sculptor, “Rough Rider,” 210. 


345 


> 


346 INDEX 


Borie, Adolphe, as portraitist, 174. 

Boston, music in, 322, 324, 334. 

Boston Athenzum, 16. 

Boston Massacre, Revere’s engraving, 227. 

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, material from, 18, 22, 28, 
36, 38, 60, 66, 84, 92, 95, 110, 150, 168, 169, 202, 204. 

Boston Public Library, material from, 105, 109. 

Boughton, George H., as genre painter, 50, 54; “Pilgrims 
going to Church,” 54. 

Boyle, John J., as sculptor, “Stone Age,” 197. 

Bradford, William, as landscapist, 49. 

Breese, Samuel L., Huntington’s portrait, 67. 

Brenner, Victor D., as sculptor, “Bronze Plaque,” 212. 

Bridges, Charles, as portraitist, “Maria Taylor Byrd,” 8. 

Bridgman, Frederick A., “Lady of Cairo Visiting,” 238. 

Brooklyn Museum, material from, 10, 45, 93, 109, 128, 
130, 133. 

Brown, Bolton, as lithographer, “Brook Nymph,” 273. 

Brown, Henry K., as sculptor, 180, 183; “ Washington,” 
183. 

Brown, John G., as genre painter, 50, 53; “Allegro and 
Penseroso,” 53. 

Brush, George de F., as figure painter, 95, 138; “Indian 
and Lily,” ““Mother and Child,” 95. 

Bryant, William C., on Thomas Cole, 42; Eaton’s por- 
trait, 93. 

Buchanan, James, campaign cartoon, 310. 

Buck, Dudley, portrait, Golden Legend, 325. 

Buckingham, Duke of, and art, 4. 

Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, material from, 94, 126, 129, 
154. 

Bunce, William G., as landscapist, “Early Morning,” 86. 

Bunker Hill, Trumbull’s painting, 33. 

Burleigh, H. T., My Way’s Cloudy, 343. 

Burroughs, Bryson, as visionary, “Princess and Swine- 
herd, 159. 

Burt, Charles, as engraver, “Henry Inman,” 232. 

Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, material from, 143. 

Byles, Mather, Pelham’s portrait, 4. 

Byrd, Maria Taylor, Bridges’ portrait, 8. 


Casot, Sebastian, ship, 113. 

Cadman, Charles W., as musician, From the Land of the 
Sky-blue Water, portrait, 339. 

Calder, A. Sterling, as sculptor, ‘Depew Memorial Foun- 
tain,” 211. 

Camp meeting, 82. 

Caricature, development, 306; social examples, 308-310, 
315-317; political examples, 310-315, 318. 

Carlsen, Emil, as still-life painter, 118; as Luminist, “Lazy 
Sea,” 128. 

Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, material from, 32, 88, 134. 

Carpenter, John A., as musician, On a Screen, 339. 

Carpenter, William, Earl’s portrait, 14. 

Carr, Benjamin, opera, The Archers, 328. 

Carr, J., Musical Journal, 325. 

Cartoons. See Caricature. 

Cassatt, Mary, as figure painter, 138, 146; “‘On the 
Balcony,” 138; as etcher, “‘Au Théatre,” 263. 

Cecilia Society of Cincinnati, 323. 

Century Association, New York, material from, 26, 40, 80. 

Cesare, Oscar, as caricaturist, “Printemps,” One Hun- 
dred Cartoons, 318. 

Cézanne, Paul, and Expressionism, 155, 156. 

Chadwick, George W., as musician, Tam O’Shanter, por- 
trait, 334. 

Chamber music, 326. 

Chanler, Robert W., as animal painter, “ Porcupines,” 163. 


Chapman, Carlton T., as naval painter, 50. 

Chapman, John G., as genre painter, 37; ‘Casting 
Children into the Nile,” 245; as illustrator, ‘‘Chief’s 
Daughter,” 282. 

Charles I of England, and art, 4. 

Charles, William, as caricaturist, 306. 

Charleston Museum, 16. 

Chase, William M., as portraitist, ““Lady in Black,” 96; 
still-life, 118; as figure painter, 139; Sargent’s portrait, 
142. 

Cheney, John, as mezzotinter, “‘ Preciosa,’ 240. 

Chicago Art Institute, material from, 66, 79, 112, 118, 119, 
136, 174, 176, 198, 200. 

Chicago Auditorium, interior, 327. 

Childs, C. G., “Spy,” 279. 

Christy, Howard C., as illustrator, “Ex Curia,” 303. 

Church, Frederic E., as landscapist, 42, 47, 48; ““Coto- 
paxi,”’ 48. 

Church, Frederick S., as visionary, “Sirens,” 64; as 
caricaturist, ‘“‘ Mosquitoes,” 310. 

Church of the Ascension, New York, decoration, 100. 

Churches, details and interiors, modern, 100, 115, 117, 199. 

Churches, later colonial New England, 129. 

Cincinnati, music in, 323. 

Cincinnati Museum Association, material from, 93, 140, 
171, 175. 

Civil War, artistic presentation, 50, 52, 54; sculpture, 
180, 185, 187, 193. 

Clark, Walter A., as illustrator, “Lover of Music,” 300. 

Classic styles, architecture and painting, 32, 36. 

Cleveland, Grover, Reich’s etching, 238. 

Cleveland Museum of Art, material from, 20, 153. 

Closson, William B. P., as wood engraver, 255, 275; “Water 
Nymph,” 275. 

Coates, Samuel, Sully’s portrait, 28. 

Cole, Thomas, as landscapist, 41-44; “‘“Conway Peak,” 
43; “Lake Winnepesaukee,”’ 234. 

Cole, Timothy, as wood engraver, 252, 290; “Hay 
Wain,” 252; “Gillie Boy,” 290; “Lincoln,” 291; ““Day 
Dreams,” 293. 

College of the City of New York, stadium, 344. 

Colonies, English-American, and art, 4; portraiture in, 
4-15; and sculpture, 178; engraving in, 225, 228; music 
in, 320, 321. 

Columbus, Christopher, Rogers’ sculptured “History,” 
186. 

Concert life, colonial, 320, 321; early societies, 322; 
later, 344. 

Conried, Heinrich, and opera, 330. 

Constable, John, “Hay Wain,” 252. 

Converse, Frederick S., as musician, “Stage-setting for 
Sacrifice,” portrait, 336. 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, illustration, 279, 285. 

Copley, John S., training and career as portraitist, 4, 5, 
10-12; “Self-Portrait,” ‘Epes Sargent,’ 10; “Mrs. 
Seymour Fort,” “Boy with the Squirrel,’’ (Henry Pel- 
ham) 11; “ Mary Storer Green,” 12; as historical painter, 
“Death of Chatham,” 31. 

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, material from, 22, 
34, 36, 48, 53, 58, 66, '78, 87, 135, 168, 181. 

Couturier, Henri, as portraitist, “O.S. Van Cortlandt,” 6. 

Cox, Kenyon, on art, 1; as portraitist, “Augustus Saint- 
Gaudens,”’ 94; as mural painter, “Light of Learning,” 
103; mosaic, “Liberty,” 114; as figure painter, 138. 

Cram, Ralph A., on art, 1. 

Crammond, William, house, 230. 

Crawford, Thomas, as sculptor, 179, 182; ‘‘Freedom,”’ 182. 

Croome, William, as illustrator, 284. 


INDEX 347 


Cubism, 156. 

Cunard building, New York, decoration, 113. 

Currier & Ives, cartoons, 310, 311. 

Cushing, Howard G., as still-life painter, “Flower Piece,” 
121; as portraitist, “Mrs. Cushing,” 168. 


Daun, Cyrus E., as sculptor, “Appeal to the Great 
Spirit,”’ 202. 

Damrosch, Leopold, as musician, 324, 330; portrait, 324. 

Damrosch, Walter, as musician, 327, 338. 

Dance, Indian, 63; caricature, 308. 

Dannat, William T., as painter, ““Quartette,” 97. 

Da Ponte, Lorenzo, and opera, portrait, 329. 

Darley, Felix O. C., as illustrator, 37, 285-287; as lithog- 
rapher, “Headless Horseman,” 244; “Water Witch,” 
285; “Death of King Philip,” “Gossips,” “Cobbler 
Keezar,” 286; as caricaturist, “Hungarians,” 308. 

Davenport, Homer C., as caricaturist, 307, 314; “Wall 
Street’s New Guardian,” 314. 

Davies, Arthur B., as mural painter, 112; as visionary, 
157-159; “Throne,” 157; ‘‘Rose to Rose,” “Dream,” 
158; “Girdle of Ares,’ 159; as etcher, “Antique 
Mirror,” 269; as lithographer, ““Golden City,” 273. 

Davis, Charles H., as landscapist, ‘‘ August,” 86. 

Davis, John, New Orleans opera, 329. 

Dearth, Henry G., as still-life painter, “Offering to 
Buddha,” 120; as Luminist, “‘Golden Sunset,’’ 130. 

De Camp, Joseph, as portraitist, 139, 144; “H. H. Fur- 
ness,” 144. 

De Forest, David C., and wife, Morse’s portraits, 25. 

De Francisci, Anthony de, as medalist, 222. 

Delanoy, Abraham, Jr., as portraitist, “Benjamin West,” 
13. 

Delaplaine’s Repository of Distinguished American Charac- 
ters, 229, 231. 

Demuth, Charles, as Modernist, ‘‘ Milltown,” 165 

Detroit Institute of Art, material from, 34, 116, 127, 143, 
145, 147, 149, 177, 213, 214. 

Devereux, “Rasselas,” 282. 

Dewing, Maria O., as still-life painter, “Poppies and 
Mignonette,” 118. 

Dewing, Thomas W.., as figure painter, “Girl with Lute,” 
141. 

Diaz de le Pefia, Narcisse, “Lovers,” 251. 

Dickinson, Sidney E., as portraitist, “Robert Aitken,” 
176. 

Dielman, Frederick, as mural painter, ‘‘ History,” 116. 

Dippel, Andreas, and opera, 330. 

Donoghue, John, as sculptor, “ Young Sophocles,” 198. 

Doolittle, Amos, as engraver, “‘ Battle of Lexington,” 228. 

Dougherty, Paul, as Luminist, “Late Afternoon,” 131. 

Doughty, Thomas, as landscapist, 41, 43; ““On the Susque- 
hanna,” 43; “Flat Rock Dam,” 279. 

Dove, Arthur G., as Modernist, ‘‘ Wind and Trees,”’ 166. 

Dow, Arthur, as wood engraver, 255. 

Drake, Alexander W., and illustration, 290, 291. 

Drummond, Robert R., Early Music in Philadelphia, 320. 

Du Bois, Guy P., as figure painter, “Scene in a Restaurant,” 
154. 

Diisseldorf Gallery, New York, 16. 

Du Mond, Frank V., as mural painter, “Departure of the 
Pioneers,”’ 110. 

Dunlap, William, as portraitist, “Artist showing his 
First Picture,” Arts of Design, 21; as historical painter, 
30; opera, Archers, 328. 

Durand, Asher B., as portraitist, “James Madison,” 26; 
as landscapist, 42, 44; “Lake George,” 44; Elliott’s 

_ portrait, 66; as engraver, 231, 233-235; “Aaron 

XII—23 


Ogden,” 231; “Capture of André,” 233; “Lake 
Winnepesaukee,”’ 234 ‘ Ariadne,’ 235; “ Wife,” 280. 
Duveneck, Frank, as figure painter, 93, 139; “ Whistling 

Boy,” 93; Grafly’s bust, 204; as etcher, “Oblong 
Riva,” 259. 
Duyckinck, Gerret, as portraitist, “Mrs. Augustus Jay,” 7. 
Dvorak, Antonin, on American music, 339. 


Eaxrys, Thomas, as genre painter, 51, 57, 58; “Rush 
carving the Allegorical Figure,” 57; “Salutat,’” 58; 
as portraitist, ‘Thinker,”’ 96. 

Earl, Ralph, as portraitist, “William Carpenter,” 14. 

Eastman Theater, Rochester, decoration, 113. 

Eaton, Wyatt, as portraitist, “W.C. Bryant,” 93; ‘Abra- 
ham Lincoln,” 291. 

Eberle, Abastenia S., as sculptor, “Windy Door-step,” 
218. 

Edwards, Jonathan, as New England intellectual, 10. 

Ehninger, John W., “Legend of St. Gwendoline,” 292. 

Eisfield, Theodore, as musician, 326. 

Election cartoons (1856), 310; (1860), 311. 

Elliott, Charles L., as portraitist, ‘A. B. Durand,’’ 66. 

Emmes, Thomas, “Increase Mather,” 225. 

Emmons, Nathaniel, as portraitist, “Samuel Sewall,” 8. 

Engraving, reproductive, 223; varieties, 223, 224; painter-, 
253; photomechanical, 278. 

Etching, process, 253, 254; reproductive, examples, 237, 
238; painter-, examples, 256-269. 

Kuterpean Society of New York, 322. 

Evans, Rudulph, as sculptor, “Golden Hour,” 218. 

Expressionism. See Modernism. 


Farrcuip, Blair, as musician, 339. 

Farny, H. F., “Cincinnati Opera Festival,” 323; “Chicago 
Auditorium,” 327. 

Farragut, David G., Saint-Gaudens’ statue, 193. 

Faulkner, Barry, as mural painter, “Dramatic Music,” 113. 

Feke, Robert, as portraitist, 4, 9; “Samuel Waldo,” 9. 

Fenn, Harry, as illustrator, 288. 

Festival Chorus Society of Cincinnati, 323. 

Field, Eugene, McCartan’s memorial, 219. 

Figure painting, classes, 138. See also Portraiture. 

Filmer, John, as wood engraver, “Tenuya Cafion,” 249. 

Fisher, Mrs. William A., and music, 328. 

Flagg, James M., as illustrator, “Woman’s Auxiliary,” 
303. 

Flonzaley Quartet, 326. 

Folsette, H., “Park Theatre,” 329. 

Foote, Arthur, as musician, portrait, 336. 

Foote, Mary H., as illustrator, “Picture in the Fireplace 
Bedroom,”’ 290. 

Fort, Mrs. Seymour, Copley’s portrait, 5, 11. 

Foster, Ben, as landscapist, “Late Autumn Moonrise,” 87. 

Foster, John, as engraver, “Richard Mather,” 225. 

Foster, Stephen C., as musician, Uncle Ned, portrait, 340. 

Fourth of July, celebration, 38. 

Franklin, Benjamin, as New England intellectual, 10; 
Longacre’s engraving, 229. ~ 

Fraser, Charles, as miniaturist, ‘‘ William Petigru,”’ 23. 

Fraser, James E., as sculptor, “End of the Trail,”’ 217. 

Freake, Elizabeth, portrait, 7. 

Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, material from, 69, 70, 
118, 141. 

French, Daniel C., as sculptor, 189, 195, 196; “‘ Minute 
Man,” 195; “Death and the Sculptor,” “Spirit of Life,” 
196. 

French, Edward D., as engraver, “Bookplate,” 237. 

French, Frank, as engraver, 255. 


348 INDEX 


Frieseke, Frederick C., as Luminist, “Under the Willows,” 
171. 

Frontier, development and art, 2; missions, Asbury, 213. 

Frost, Arthur B., as illustrator, “‘Corn-Shucking,” 298. 

Fry, William H., and opera, “Scene from Notre Dame,” 
333. 

Fuller, George, as visionary, 59, 60; “ Arethusa,”” 60. 

Furness, Horace H., De Camp’s portrait, 144. 


GaBRIEL, Ralph H., on development of American art, 1-3. 

Garber, Daniel, as Luminist, “’Tohickon,” 132. 

Garcia, Manuel, and opera, 329. 

Garfield, James A., Ward’s statue, 188. 

Garnsey, Elmer E., as decorator, 108. 

Gatti-Casazza, Giulio, and opera, 330. 

Gaul, Gilbert, as military painter, 50. 

Gay, John, Beggar’s Opera, 320, 321. 

Gay, Walter, as painter of interiors, ““Commode,”’ 119. 

Genre painting, first period, 37; postbellum, 50, 51; 
French trained school, 91; in sculpture, 210, 217, 218. 

Gershwin, George, Rhapsody in Blue, 342; as musician, 343. 

Gibson, Charles D., as illustrator, ‘Princess Aline,” 299; 
as caricaturist, “Botany in the Bowery,” “Education of 
Mr. Pipp,” 316; New Cartoons, 316. 

Gifford, Robert S., as landscapist, “Near the Coast,” 89. 

Gift annuals, 277, 281, 282. 

Gignoux, Régis F., as landscapist, “Summer on the Hud- 
son,” 45; ‘“‘Housatonic Valley,’ 234. 

Gilbert, Mrs. George H., Wiles’ portrait, 143. 

Gilbert, Henry F. B., as musician, 339. 

Gilchrist, William W. J., as genre painter, “ Model’s 
Rest,”’ 175. 

Gilmor, Robert, Sartain’s mezzotint, 239. 

Glackens, William J., as portraitist, 139, 152, 171; “Family 
Group,” 152; “ Walter Hampden,” 171; as illustrator, 
“Essex Street,” 304. 

Gladstone, William E., Hamilton’s portrait, 145. 

Gleason’s Pictorial, and wood engraving, 246. 

Godey’s Magazine, illustration, 280. 

Gogh, Vincent van, and Expressionism, 155. 

Goldmark, Rubin, as musician, 339, 344. 

Gorman, Ross, as musician, 342. 

Goupil Gallery, New York, 16. 

Government buildings, modern, 276. 

Grafly, Charles, as sculptor, 190, 204; ‘‘ Frank Duveneck,” 
204. 

Grahame, Kenneth, Dream Days, illustration, 302. 

Graham’s Magazine, illustration, 280. 

Grau, Maurice, and opera, 330. 

Gray, Henry P., as historical painter, “Judgment of 
Paris,” 36; as portraitist, 65. 

Green, Elizabeth S., as illustrator, “Real Birthday of 
Drante,” 302. 

Green, Samuel A., John Foster, 225. 

Greenough, Horatio, as sculptor, 179, 182; ‘‘Washing- 
ton,” 182. 

Gregory, John, as sculptor, ““Wood Nymph,” 220. 

Guérin, Jules, as illustrator, “‘On the Harlem,” 301. 


Haptey, Henry, as musician, The Culprit Fay, 337. 

Hahnemann, Christian F. §., Niehaus’ statue, 198. 

Hale, Gardner, as Modernist, “Arrival of Saint Julian’s 
Parents,’ 167. 

Hale, Nathan, Macmonnies’ statue, 205. 

Halpin, John, as engraver, 230, 234; “N. P. Willis,” 230; 
“Housatonic Valley,” 234. 

Hamerton, Philip G., Etching and Etchers, 256. 

Hamilton, John McL., as portraitist, “Gladstone,” 145. 


Hammerstein, Oscar, and opera, 330. 

Hampden, Walter, Glackens’ portrait, 171. 

Hancock, John, Copley’s portrait, 5. 

Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, 321. 

Harding, Chester, as portraitist, 17, 22; “John Randclph,” 
22; *‘Daniel Boone,”’ 231. 

Harper’s Monthly, illustration, 289. 

Harper’s Weekly, and wood engraving, 246, 249. 

Harris, Joel C., Uncle Remus, illustration, 298. 

Harrison, Thomas A., as Luminist, “Grand Miroir,” 127. 

Hart, Joel, as sculptor, 179. 

Hartley, Marsden, as Modernist, “Still Life,” 165. 

Harvard College Library, material from, 321, 325, 333. 

Harvard Union, material from, 324. 

Haskell, Ernest, as etcher, “Head of the Ostrich,” 266. 

Hassam, Childe, as Luminist, 124, 129, 138; “Church at. 
Old Lyme,” 129; war pictures, 151; as etcher, “Old 
Warehouses,” 264. 

Havell, Robert, as aquatinter, “Birds,” “West Point,” 
Q41. 

Hawthorne, Charles W., as figure painter, ‘Trousseau,” 
172. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, illustration, 245. 

Hayman, Francis, “Scene from Beggar's Opera,” 321. 

Health, quack doctor, 53. 

Healy, George P. A., as portraitist, 65, 66; “Self-Portrait,” 
66. 

Henri, Robert, as figure painter, 139, 150; “‘Julianita,”’ 150. 

Henry, Edward L., as genre painter, “Old Westover Man- 
sion,” 58. 

Herbert, Victor, ‘Score of Natoma,” portrait, 331. 

Herford, Oliver, as caricaturist, Alphabet of Celebrities, 317. 

Herter, Albert, tapestry, “Great Crusade,” 116. 

Hesselius, Gustavus, as portraitist, “Self-Portrait,” 8. 

Higgins, Eugene, as visionary, “Lonely Road,” 161; as 
etcher, ‘Midnight Duty,” 268. 

Higginson, Henry L., and music, Sargent’s portrait, 324. 

Hill, Edward B., as musician, 338. 

Hill, J. H., as etcher, ‘ Moonlight,” 257. 

Hill, John, as aquatinter, “New York,” Picturesque Views, 
240. 

Hill, John W., as lithographer, “Rockland Lake,” 243. 

Hill, Uriah C., as musician, 322, 326. 

Hinshelwood, Robert, as engraver, “Smoky Mountains,” 
O30. 

Historical painting, West and early, 29, 30. 

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, material from, 8. 

Hoffman, Malvina, as sculptor, “Sacrifice,” 222. 

Home Book of the Picturesque, 234. 

Homer, Winslow, as genre painter, 50, 54, 55; “Prisoners 
from the Front,” 54; “ Hark, the Lark!” 55; as landscape 
and marine painter, 73, 75, 83, 84; “Summer Night,’’ 
“Cannon Rock,” 83; ‘Hound and Hunter,” “Look- 
out,” 84; as water-colorist, “Palm Tree,” “Shore and 
Surf,” 85; ‘“Grafter,’ 249; as illustrator, 288, 292; 
“Excelsior,” 288; “‘The Courtin’,” 292. 

Hopkinson, Charles S., as portraitist, “Prince Saionji,” 170. 

Hopkinson, Francis, as musician, 321. 

Hoppin, Augustus, “The Courtin’,” 246. 

Hosmer, Harriet G., as sculptor, 179, 187; “Zenobia,” 187. 

Hours at Home, illustration, 289. 

Hovenden, Thomas, as genre painter, 50, 56; “Jerusalem 
the Golden,” 56. 

Hudson River School, 42. 

Hunt, William M., as portraitist, 65, 67; “Charles Sum- 
ner,” 67; as mural painter, “Flight of Night,” 101; 
“Mrs. Adams,” 236; as lithographer, 254, 269; “Flower 
Seller,’ 269. 


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INDEX 349 


Huntington, Daniel, as historical painter, 30, 35; 
“Mercy’s Dream,” 35; as portraitist, 65, 67; “S. L. 
Breese,” 67; ‘‘Preciosa,’’ 240. 

Hurd, Nathaniel, Copley’s portrait, 5; as engraver, 
“‘Bookplate,”’ 226. 

Hyatt, Anna V., as sculptor, “Jeanne d’ Arc,” 216. 

Hyde, Helen, as wood engraver, 255. 


Ittman, Thomas, “Drawing Book,” 281. 

Illuminated Bible, 245. 

Illustration, William Morris’ influence, 275; and decora- 
tion, 277; development and decay, 277, 278, 305, 307. 

Immigrants, caricature, 308, 309. 

Impressionism. See Luminism. 

Indianapolis Art Association, material from, 131. 

Indians, artistic presentation, 63, 104, 106, 174, 197, 202, 
207, 217. 

Inman, Henry, as portraitist, 17; as genre painter, 37, 
39; ““Mumble the Peg,” 39; as lithographer, “‘ Mrs. In- 
man,” 242; “‘ William Rawle,” 243; as illustrator, 279. 

Inness, George, and Page, 36; as landscapist, 73, 74, 76—- 
79, 124; “Juniata River,’ “Peace and Plenty,” 76; 
“Delaware Valley,” “Pine Grove,” 77; “Coming 
Storm,” “Sunset,” 78; “After a Summer Shower,” 79. 

Ipsen, Ernest L., as portraitist, ‘Mrs. Ipsen,’’ 170. 

Irving, Washington, Sketch Book, illustration, 247, 286. 

Isham, Samuel, on early portraiture, 17. 

Ivins, Florence W., as wood engraver, 255. 

Ivins, William M., acknowledgment to, 224. 


Jackson, Andrew, Mills’ statue, 183. 

Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, Peale’s miniature, 24. 

Jarvis, John W., as portraitist, 17, 22; ““ Portrait of a Lady,” 

eee 

Jay, Mrs. Augustus, Duyckinck’s portrait, 7. 

Jazz music, 342. 

Jefferson, Joseph, as Bob Acres, 296. 

Jefferson, Thomas, Neagle’s engraving, 231. 

Johansen, John C., as figure painter, “Signing the Peace 
Treaty,” 173. 

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, material from, 142. 

Johnson, Eastman, as genre painter, 50, 52; ““Old Ken- 
tucky Home,” “Knitting for Soldiers,”’ 52; as portrait- 
ist, 65, 67; “Two Men,” 67. 

Johnson, Mrs. Reverdy, Sully’s portrait, 27. 

Johnson, Thomas, as etcher, “Walt Whitman,” 238. 

Jordan & Halpin, engraving, 284. 

Juengling, Frederick, as wood engraver, “ Whistler,” 250; 
as illustrator, ““Engineer,” 291. 


Keck, Charles, as sculptor, “Chandelier,” 215. 

Keese, John, Poets of America, decoration, 284. 

Keith, William, as landscapist, 49. 

Keller, Arthur I., as illustrator, “Little Revenge,” 298. 

Keller, Henry G., as still-life painter, “October Fruits,” 
ve home a 

Kelley, Edgar S., as musician, 338. 

Kelly, James E., “Gillie Boy,” 290; “‘Engineer crossing 
a Chasm,” 291. 

Kemble, Edward W.., as caricaturist, “Bear Story,” 315. 

Kendall, William Sergeant, as figure painter, ‘‘Cross- 
lights,”’ 145. 

Kensett, John F., as landscapist, 42, 46; “Highlands of 
the Hudson,” 46. 

Kent, Rockwell, as visionary, 85, 155, 162; “Burial of a 
Young Man,” 162; as wood engraver, 276, 318; “‘ Mast- 
Head,” 276; “Filling the Treasure Chest,” 318; as 
illustrator, ‘Book Jacket for Wilderness,” 305. 


Keppler, Joseph, as caricaturist, 306, 309, 313; “Uncle 
Sam’s Show,” 313. 

King’s Hand Book of Boston, 334. 

Kingsley, Elbridge, as wood engraver, 255, 274, 291; “Old 
Hadley Street,” 274. 

Kneisel Quartet, 326. 

Knox, Henry, Stuart’s portrait, 18. 

Konti, Isidore, as sculptor, “The Brooks,” 203. 

Krehbiel, Henry E., Chapters. of Opera, 330. 

Krimmel, John L., as genre painter, 37, 38; “Fourth of 
July,” 38. 

Kroll, Leon, as figure painter, “In the Country,” 177. 

Kruell, Gustav, as wood engraver, 251, 255; “Princes in 
the Tower,” 251. 


La Fares, John, art, 68, 71, 72; “Paradise Valley,” 71; 
“Wild Roses and Water Lily,” “Muse of Painting,” 
72; as mural painter, 98-100; ‘Christ and Nicodemus,” 
“Athens,” 99; stained glass, “Resurrection Window,” 
*“Peacoek Window,” 117; as water-colorist, ‘“ Aituta- 
gata,” “Samoan Girls Dancing,” 137; Lockwood’s 
portrait, 150; “Island Home,” 248; as illustrator, 
287, 288; “Enoch Alone,” 287. See also frontispiece. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, Peale’s portrait, 24; Bartlett’s 
statue, 206. 

Landscape, Hudson River School, 41, 42; Heroic School, 
47; La Farge, 71; great school, 73-76; engraving, 
234, 235, 240; lithograph, 243; etching, 256-261. 
See also Luminism. 

Landscape Book, 234. 

Lankes, Julius J., as wood engraver, “Vermont Farm- 
house,” 276. 

Lathrop, William L., as landscapist, “Tow-Path,” 87. 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, “‘ Robert Gilmor,” 239. 

Lawson, Ernest, as Luminist, “Spring Night,” “ Vanish- 
ing Mist,” 134. 

Lawton, Henry W., ©’Connor’s statue, 215. 

Layton Art Gallery, Milwaukee, material from, 55. 

Leslie, John, as genre painter, 37. 

Lester, C. Edwards, Artists of America, 232. 

Leutze, Emanuel, as historical painter, 30, 35; “‘ Washing- 
ton crossing the Delaware,” 35; ‘‘Why don’t he come?” 
280. 

Lever, Hayley, as Luminist, “Dawn,” 135. 

Lewis, Arthur A., as etcher, “Old Woman Reading,”’ 268. 

Lexington and Concord, battle, French’s ““Minute Man,” 
195; Doolittle’s engraving, 228. 

Library Company of Philadelphia, material from, 228. 

Library of Congress, material from, 101, 102, 106, 114, 
116, 191, 311, 320, 321, 325, 331, 335, 337-339, 341. 

Lie, Jonas, as Luminist, “ Western Slope,” 136. 

Life, and social caricature, 307, 315, 316. 

Lincoln, Abraham, Ball’s group, 185; Saint-Gaudens, 
statue, 194; Marshall’s engraving, 232; Cole’s engrav- 
ing, 291; caricature, 311. ; 

Lindsay, A., engraving, 293. 

Line engraving, process, 224. 

Linton, William J., Masters of Wood Engraving, 244; as 
wood engraver, 274, 290; “Waterfall,” 274. 

Lithography, character, 242; examples, 242-244; process, 
254; painter-, examples, 254, 269-273. 

Lockwood, Wilton, as painter of flowers, “Peonies,” 119; 
as portraitist, ““John La Farge,” 150. 

Loeffler, Charles M., as musician, A Pagan Poem, 338. 

Longacre, James B., as engraver, “Franklin,” 229; 
“Daniel Boone,” 231. 

Longfellow, Henry W., Poems, illustration, 240. 

Longstreet, Augustus B., Georgia Scenes, 284, 


350 INDEX 


Louvre, Paris, material from, 70. 

Low, Will H., as mural painter, ‘‘ Music of the Sea,” 102. 

Lukeman, Augustus, as sculptor, “Francis Asbury,” 213. 

Luks, George B., as portraitist, 139, 150-152; “Old 
Duchess,” 150; “Blue Devils,” 151; “Sulking Boy,” 152; 
as illustrator, “Polo,” 304. 

Luminism, Whistler and La Farge, 68; principles, 122, 
123, 155; in America, 123, 124, 187; in figure and 
portrait painting, 138, 139. 

Luxembourg Gallery, Paris, material from, 83, 92, 194. 

Lyford, Ralph, Castle Agrazant, 328. 

Lyon, James, as musician, Hymn to Friendship, “Song 
from Urania,” 321. 


McCarran, Edward, as sculptor, “Eugene Field Me- 
morial,”’ 219. 

MacDowell, Edward A., as musician, Indian Suite, por- 
trait, 337. 

McEntee, Jervis, as landscapist, “Autumn,” 45. 

MacKnight, Dodge, as water-colorist, ““Below Zero,” 133. 

MacLaughlin, Donald S., as etcher, “Saint Sulpice,” 
265. 

Macmonnies, Frederick W., as sculptor, 204, 205; 
“Bacchante,” 204; ‘Nathan Hale,” 205. 

MacNeil, Hermon A., as sculptor, 190, 207; “Sun-Vow,” 
207. 

Macomb, Alexander, Weinmann’s statue, 211. 

Madison, James, Durand’s portrait, 26. 

Malbone, Edward G., as portraitist, “Self-Portrait,” 23. 

Manet, Edouard, as figure painter, 138. 

Manifest Destiny, and art, 49. : 

Manship, Paul, as sculptor, “Centaur and Nymph,” 221. 

Maretzek, Max, and opera, 329. 

Marin, John, as Modernist, “River Effect,” 164; as 

etcher, 265, 267; ‘“‘Moul’ St. Maurice,” 267. 

Marine painting, 61, 75, 83-85, 90, 127, 128, 135. 

Marion, Francis, and the British officer, 239. 

Marsh, Henry, as wood engraver, 250, 288; 
Fan,” 250. 

Marshall, William E., as engraver, “Abraham Lincoln,” 
932; 

Martin, Homer D., as landscapist, 73, 74, 80-82, 124; 
“Lake Sanford,” 80; “ Andante,” “Harp of the Winds,” 
81; “‘ Westchester Hills,” 82; “Smoky Mountains,” 
235. 

Martiny, Philip, as sculptor, “Soldiers and Sailors 
Monument,” 199. 

Mason, Lowell, as musician, portrait, 321. 

Mason, William, as musician, 326. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, material from, 8. 

Masses, and caricature, 315, 317. 

Mather, Cotton, Pelham’s portrait and engraving, 4, 226. 

Mather, Increase, career, 225; Emmes’ engraving, 225; 
Blessed Hope, 225. 

Mather, Richard, Foster’s woodcut, 225. 

Matteson, Tompkins H., as genre painter, 37. 

Matzka, George, as musician, 326. 

Maverick, Peter R., as engraver, ‘“‘ Bookplate,’’ 227. 

Melchers, Julius G., as figure painter, “Fencing Master,” 
143. 

Mendelssohn Quintet, 326. 

Metcalf, Willard L., as Luminist, “‘ Unfolding Buds,” 127. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, material from, 
8, 12, 13, 23, 24, 35, 45, 46, 54, 56, 60, 63, 67, 72, 76, 
77, 79-83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 94, 96, 97, 119, 132, 141, 142, 
146, 150, 158-60, 163, 172, 184, 192, 197, 204, 207, 
208, 218, 221, 226, 227, 229, 232, 240, 242, 256-265, 
268-270, 272-274, 276. 


“<a 


Ktruscan 


Metropolitan Opera House, New York, 330, 332. 

Mezzotint, process, 224; examples, 239, 240. 

Mielatz, Charles, as etcher, ‘““ Washington Square,” 264. 

Milch Galleries, New York, material from, 130. 

Millais, John E., ‘Princes in the Tower,” 251. 

Miller, Kenneth H., as visionary, “A. P. Ryder,” 161. 

Miller, Richard E., as figure painter, “Reverie,” 172. 

Millet, Francis D., as genre painter, ““Window Seat,” 92. 

Mills, Clark, as sculptor, ‘‘ Jackson,” 183. 

Milmore, Martin, French’s memorial, 196. 

Miniatures, 23, 24. 

Minneapolis Institute of Art, material from, 140. 

Minnesota State Capitol, material from, 105. 

Missionaries, Asbury, 213. 

Mitchell, Donald G., Lorgnette, 308. 

Mitchell, S. Weir, Vonnoh’s portrait, 144. 

Modernism, principles, 155, 156. 

Monet, Claude, and Luminism, 122. 

Moran, Edward, as landscapist, 49. 

Moran, Mary N., as etcher, “Summer,” 256. 

Moran, Thomas, as landscapist, 42, 47, 49; “Grand 
Canyon of the Yellowstone,” 49. 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, material from Library, 107. 

Morris, William, influence on book illustration, 275. 

Morse, Samuel F. B., as portraitist, 17, 25; “D. C. de 
Forest,” ‘‘Mrs. de Forest,” 25; as historical painter, 
30, 34; “Old House of Representatives,” 34; “Wife,” 
280. 

Morse, W. H., “‘Gossips,” 286. 

Morton, Mrs. Perez, Stuart’s portrait, 20. 

Mosaic, 114-116. 

Mosenthal, Joseph, as musician, 326. 

Mosler, Gustave H., as genre painter, “Return of the 
Prodigal Son,” 92. 

Mosler, Henry L., as genre painter, 50. 

Mount, William S., as genre painter, 37, 40; ‘ Bargaining 
for a Horse,” ‘Power of Music,” 40. 

Mowbray, H. Siddons, as mural painter, “King Arthur 
and Divine Comedy,” 107. 

Mural painting, development, 98. 

Murphy, John F., as landscapist, “Afternoon Light,” 88. 

Music, heterogeneous character in America, 319, 325, 340; 
American composers, 338; Americanism, 339-344. 
See also Concert life; Opera; Orchestras. 

Music of the Modern World, 329. 

Musical Digest, on National Federation, 328. 

Myers, Jerome, as Luminist, 139; as genre painter, 
“Evening at the Pier,” 160. 


Nast, Thomas, as illustrator, ““Church Underground,” 
289; as caricaturist, 306, 312, 313; “Group of Vul- 
tures,” ‘Tammany Tiger loose,” 312; “Skeleton Army,” 
313. 

National Academy of Design, New York, 16, 25. 

National Federation of Musical Clubs, 328. 

National Gallery, London, material from, 69, 71. 

National Gallery of Art, Washington, material from, 99, 
125, 126, 132, 144, 170, 173. 

National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 
229, 231. 

Navy, United States-Macedonian fight, 233. 

Neagle, John, as portraitist, “Gilbert Stuart,’ 28; as 
engraver, ‘Thomas Jefferson,” 231. 

Negroes, life, 40, 52; music, 339, 340, 342. 

Nevin, Arthur, as musician, 339. 

Nevin, Ethelbert, The Rosary, 341. 

New England Conservatory of Music, 334. 

New Haven Symphony Orchestra, 335. 


— oe SS Te a ae 


| 
: 


INDEX 351 


New Netherland, festivities, 39. 

New Orleans, opera in, 329. 

New York City, as art center, 16; views and scenes, 
134, 151, 153, 164, 240, 264, 304; music in, 321, 324, 
326, 329, 330. 

New York Historical Society, material from, 7, 10, 12-15, 
21, 40, 43, 44, 67, 233, 330. 

New York Public Library, material from, 22, 48, 52, 54, 
226, 236, 238, 239, 243, 245, 265, 275, 314, 321-326, 
328, 329, 332, 340. 

New York State Capitol, material from, 101. 

New York Symphony Society, 324. 

Newark (N. J.) Museum Association, material from, 217. 

Newsam, Albert, as lithographer, “‘ William Rawle,’ 234. 

Niehaus, Charles H., as sculptor, “Hahnemann,” 198. 

Nocturnes, Whistler’s, 68, 70, 71. 

Nudes, in painting, 33, 57, 58, 235; in early sculpture, 
179, 181. 


Oakey, Violet, as mural painter, “‘Penn’s Vision,”’ 111. 

Ochtman, Leonard, as landscapist, “‘ Morning in Summer,” 
88. 

O’Connor, Andrew, Jr., as sculptor, “General Lawton,” 
S15. 

Oertel, J. A., “Ichabod Crane,” 247. 

Ogden, Aaron, Durand’s engraving, 231. 

O’ Keefe, Georgia, as Modernist, ‘‘ Music,” 166. 

Oldberg, Arne, as musician, 338. 

Omar Khayyam, Vedder’s illustrations, 292. 

Opera, in America, 328-332. 


Opper, Frederick B., as caricaturist, 307, 313, 314, 


“County Fair Orator,” 314. 
Orchestras, American, 322, 324, 327. 
Original Etchings by American Artists, 260. 
Orr, John W., as wood engraver, 247, 248. 
Otis, Bass, “Jefferson,” 231; as lithographer, ‘ Mill,” 242. 


Pacu, Walter, as Modernist, “Subway,” 164. 

Page, William, as historical painter, “Ceres,” 36; as 
portraitist, 65, 66; “Ednah Parker,” 66. 

Paine, John K., as musician, Shakespeare’s Tempest, por- 
trait, 333. 

Painting, position of Whistler and La Farge, 68; field, 
177. See also Genre; Historical; Landscape; Lumi- 
nism; Modernism; Mural; Still-life; Visionary. 

Painter-wood engraving, examples, 274, 275. 

Palmer, Erastus D., as sculptor, 180, 184; “White Cap- 
tive, 184. 

Palmo, Ferdinand, and opera, 329. 

Panama-Pacific Exposition, material from, 219. 

Park Theater, New York, 329. 

Parker, Ednah, Page’s portrait, 66. 

Parker, Horatio W., as musician, Hora Novissima, portrait, 
325. 

Parrish, Maxfield, as illustrator, “‘ Walls were as of Jasper,” 
302. 

Parrish, Stephen, as etcher, “Trenton,” 256. 

Parshall, De Witt, as landscapist, “Hermit Creek 
Canyon,” 89. 

Pastels, early, 5, 12, 15. 

Paxton, William M., as figure painter, ‘‘ Nude,” 169. 

Peabody, George, Story’s statue, 184. 

Peale, Anna C., as miniaturist, ““Mrs. Andrew Jackson,” 
24. 

Peale, Charles Willson, as artist, 5, 14; West’s portrait, 
12; “Peale Family Group,” 14. 

Peale, James, as portraitist, “Mrs. James Wilson,” 24, 

Peale, Rembrandt, as portraitist, 17, 24; “Lafayette,” 


24; as historical painter, “‘Court of Death,’ 34; as 
lithographer, ‘‘ Washington,” 242. 

Pease, Joseph I., “Old ’76 and Young ’48,”’ 236. 

Pelham, Henry, Copley’s portrait, 11. 

Pelham, Peter, and Copley, as portraitist, 4; as en- 
graver, 223, 226; “Cotton Mather,” 226. 

Pendleton Bros., lithograph, ‘‘ Flat Rock Dam,” 279. 

Penfield, Edward, as lithographer, ‘Cover Design,” 271. 

Penn, William, colonial vision, 111. 

Pennell, Joseph, Adams’ portrait, 176; as etcher, 260, 
261; “Ponte Vecchio,” 260; “Trains,” 261; as lithog- 
rapher, “Lake of Fire,” 271; as illustrator, 296, 297: 
“Winchester Cathedral,’ 296; ‘Rainbow on the 
Thames,” 297. 

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 16; 
material from, 31, 38, 39, 43, 118, 144, 145. 

Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, material from, 28. 

Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, material from, 127, 
145, 146. 

Pennsylvania State Capitol, material from, 106, 107, 111. 

People’s Symphony Concerts, New York, 326. 

Philharmonic Society of New York, 322, 324; programs, 
324. 

Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, material from, 87, 
120, 125, 134, 151, 152, 157, 158, 160-162, 173. 

Photography, in illustration, 278, 292, 293. 

Phyfe, Duncan, style, 20. 

Piccirilli, Attilio, as sculptor, “‘ Fragilina,”’ 207. 

Picturesque America, wood engravings, 235, 249. 

Pierian Sodality, 324. 

Pilgrims, going to church, 54; music, 320. 

Pisarro, Camille, and Luminism, 122. 

Platt, Charles A., as etcher, ‘‘ Butter-milk Channel,” 266. 

Port Folio, illustration, 279; caricatures, 308. 

Portfolio of Proof Impressions, 290. 

Portraiture and figure painting, colonial, 4, 5; early re- 
publican, 16,17; postbellum, 65; Whistler, 69; French 
tendency, 91; under Luminism, 138, 189; engraving, 
225, 226, 229-232; etching, 237-239; lithograph, 242, 
243. See also Visionary. 

Post-Impressionism. See Modernism. 

Powell, John, as musician, 339. 

Powers, Hiram, as sculptor, 179, 181; “‘Greek Slave,” 181. 

Prang, Louis, as lithographer, 244. 

Pratt, Bela L., as sculptor, “Soldier Boy,” 208. 

Pratt, Matthew, as portraitist, ““American School,” 13. 

Pratt, Waldo S., Music of the Pilgrims, 320. 

Prendergast, Maurice B., as figure painter, “Sunset and 
Sea Fog,” 157. 

Princeton University, material from, 203. 

Proctor, A. Phimister, as sculptor, “Princeton Tiger,” 
203. 

Provost, C. H., “Opening Night of Opera,” 332. 

Puck, and caricature, 306, 309, 313, 314. 

Pyle, Howard, as illustrator, 289, 293, 294; ‘‘Slave Sale,” 
“A Chronicle,” 293; “Wonder Clock,” “Cap’n Gold- 
sack,”’ 294. ; 


Quripor, John, as genre painter, “Stuyvesant watching the 
Festivities,’ 39; as caricaturist, “‘Marks and Re- 
marks,” 308. 

Quinn, Edmond I., as sculptor, “Victory,” 210. 


Ragtme, music, 342. 

Raleigh, Henry P., as illustrator, “Leatherwood God,” 301. 
Randolph, John, Harding’s portrait, 22. 

Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Co., engravers, 282. 

Rawle, William, Newsam’s lithograph, 243. 


352 INDEX 


Read, William, as portraitist, “Richard Bellingham,” 6. 

Redfield, Edward W., as Luminist, 124, 131; “‘Snowdrifts,” 
ite : 

Redwood Library, Newport, 16. 

Reich, Jacques, as etcher, “Grover Cleveland,” 238. 

Reid, Robert, as mural painter, “‘Justice,” 108. 

Reinhart, C. S., as illustrator, “Day Dreams,” “Kissing 
Gate,’ 293. 

Religion, camp meeting, 82; illustrated tracts, 282, 283. 

Remington, Frederick, as genre painter, 50; as illustrator, 
“‘Dissolute Cowpunchers,”’ 299. 

Revere, Paul, as engraver, ‘Bloody Massacre,” 227. 

Rhind, J. Massey, as sculptor, “Father Brown Memorial,” 
202. 

Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, material 
from, 131. 

Richardson, Abby S., Songs from the Old Dramatists, 288. 

Richardson, Henry H., and mural painting, 98. 

Richardson, J. H., as wood engraver, ‘Ichabod Crane,” 
“Rip Van Winkle Asleep,” 247; “Death of King 
Philip,”’ 286. 

Rinehart, William H., as sculptor, 179, 180, 185; “Re- 
becca,” 185. 

Riordan, Roger, ‘Etruscan Fan,”’ 250. 

Ritschel, William, as Luminist, “‘Morea Moon,” 130. 

Roberts, Howard, as sculptor, 189. 

Robinson, Boardman, as caricaturist, “Bogie Man,” 315. 

Robinson, Theodore, as Luminist, 123, 125; ““Vachére,” 
125. 

Rogers, John, as sculptor, “Union Refugees,” 187. 

Rogers, Randolph, as sculptor, 179, 186; “History of 
Columbus,” 186. 

Roth, Ernest D., as etcher, 265, 266; “Cathedral of 
Burgos,” 266. 

Roth, Frederick G. R., as sculptor, “‘Polar Bears,” 214. 

Rowse, Samuel W., Johnson’s portrait, 67. 

Ruckstuhl, Frederic W., as sculptor, “Evening,” 197. 

Rural life, in painting, 37, 39, 40, 52. 

Rush, William, as sculptor, 179, 182; “Nymph of the 
Schuylkill,” 181. 

Russian Symphony Society of New York, “Program,” 326. 

Rutherford, Robert M., Johnson’s portrait, 67. 

Ruzicka, Rudolph, as wood engraver, 255, 276; “ Munci- 
pal Building,” 276. 

Ryder, Albert P., as visionary and marine painter, 59, 
61-63; “Jonah,” “Smuggler’s Cove,” 61; “Constance,” 
“Death on the Race Track,” 62; “Siegfried and Rhine 
Maidens,” 63; Miller’s portrait, 161. 


Sarnt-Gaupens, Augustus, Cox’s portrait, 94; as sculptor, 
180, 189, 190, 192-195; “R. L. Stevenson,” 192; 
“Farragut,” “Sherman,” 193; “Lincoln,” “Amor 
Caritas,’ 194, “Peace of God,” 195. 

St. Louis, City Art Museum, material from 108, 149, 172. 

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Covington, decoration, 199. 

St. Matthew’s Church, Washington, decoration, 115. 

Saionji, Prince, Hopkinson’s portrait, 170. 

San Francisco Public Library, material from, 110. 

Sargent, Epes, Sr., Copley’s portrait, 10. 

Sargent, Epes, Arctic Adventure, 284. 

Sargent, Henry, as genre painter, 37, 38; “Tea Party,” 38. 

Sargent, John S., as mural painter, 109, 110; “Dogma of 
the Redemption,” 109; Apollo and the Muses,” 110; 
and Luminism, “Marble Quarry,” 132; as water- 
colorist, “In the Hayloft,” 133; as portraitist, 138, 
139, 141, 142; “Madame X,” 141; ‘“W. M. Chase,” 
“Four Doctors,” 142; war sketches, 151; “H. L. Hig- 
ginson,” 324. 


Sartain, John, as mezzotinter, “Robert Gilmor,” ** Marion 
and the British Officer,” 239; ““Why Don’t He Come?,” 
280. 

Savage, Edward, as engraver, 229, 239; “‘ Washington,” 
229. 

Schelling, Ernest, as musician, 344. 

Schoff, Stephen A., as engraver, “Marius,” 236; as etcher, 
“Mrs. Adams,” 237. 

Schofield, Elmer, as Luminist, 124. 

Scribner’s Monthly, illustration, 290. 

Scudder, Janet, as sculptor, “Victory,” 214. 

Sculpture, lateness of development, 178; neo-classic. 
school, 178, 179; native realistic school, 179, 180; 
French influence, 189, 190; national qualities, 190. 

Secession, cartoon, 311. 

Seidl, Anton, and opera, 330. 

Selected Proofs, 238, 251. 

Sewall, Samuel, Emmons’ portrait, 8. 

Sharples, James, as portraitist, “‘ Alexander Hamilton,” 15. 

Sheeler, Charles, Jr., as Modernist, ‘Pertaining to 
Yachts,’ 167. 

Sherman, William T., Saint-Gaudens’ statue, 193. 

Ships, Cabot’s, 113. 

Shrady, Henry M., as sculptor, “Artillery Coming to 
Halt,” 212. 

Simmons, Edward, as mural painter, “Morning,” 105. 

Sloan, John, as figure painter, 139, 153; “In the Wake 
of the Ferry,” 153; as etcher, “Fifth Avenue Critics,” 
268; as illustrator, 304; as caricaturist, “Top of the 
Swing,” 317. : 

Smedley, William T., as genre painter, 50; as illustrator, 
“Golden House,’ 297; “Concert,” 340. 

Smibert, John, as portraitist, 4, 9; “Bishop Berkeley and 
his Family,” 9. 

Smillie, James D., as engraver, 233; as etcher, “Lady of 
Cairo Visiting,’ 238; ““Tenuya Cafion,” 249. 

Smith, Alice H., as etcher, 264. 

Smith, André, as etcher, 265. 

Smith, David S., as musician, 338. 

Smith, H. W., “Spring of Life,” 281. 

Smith, Samuel F., America, portrait, 341. 

Smither, James, as engraver, “‘Tradesman’s Card,” 228. 

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, material from, 182. 

Snell, Henry B., as Luminist, “Entrance to Harbor of 
Polperro,” 128. 

Social conditions, postbellum, 51, 65. See also Genre. 

Social life, illustration, 268, 297, 299-301, 304. See also 
Caricature. 

Society of American Artists, 91. 

Songs, American, 340, 341. 

Sonneck, Oscar G., and history of American music, 320. 

Spanish-America, and art, 1. 

Spanish-American War, sculpture, 208, 215. 

Speicher, Eugene, as portraitist, ‘“ Young Girl,” 177. 

Spencer, Robert, as genre painter, “Bathers,” 175. 

Stained glass, colonial, 7; modern, 117. 

Steel industry, artistic presentation, 56, 271. 

Sterne, Maurice, as figure painter, “Dance of the Ele- 
ments,” 163. 

Sterner, Albert, as lithographer, “The Blind,” 272. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, Saint-Gaudens’ tablet, 192. 

Still-life, 118-21; modernistic, 165. 

Stipple, process, 224. 

Story, William W., as sculptor, 179, 184; “George 
Peabody,” 184. 

Strong, Templeton, as musician, 338. 

Strycker, Jacobus Gerritsen, as portraitist, “Adrian Van 
der Donk.” 6. 


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INDEX 353 


Stuart, Gilbert, on Copley, 5, 10; as portraitist, 16, 18-20; 
“Henry Knox,” 18; ‘“ Washington,” 18, 19; Neagle’s 
portrait, 28. 

Sully, Thomas, as portraitist, 17, 27; “Mrs. Reverdy 
Johnson,” 27; “Samuel Coates,” 28; ‘Mrs. Inman,” 
242. 

Sumner, Charles, Hunt’s portrait, 67. 

Sun and Shade, 53. 

Symons, Gardner, as Luminist, 124. 


Tack, Augustus V., as visionary, “House of Matthew,” 
160. 

Taft, Lorado, as sculptor, “Solitude of the Soul,” 200. 

Tammany Hall, Nast’s cartoons, 312. 

Tanner, Benjamin, ‘‘ United States and Macedonian,” 233. 

Tapestry, 116. 

Tarbell, Edmund C., as figure painter, 147, 148; ‘‘ Venetian 
Blind,” 147; “Girl Crocheting,” 148. 

Taylor, Deems, as musician, 339. 

Taylor, F. Walter, as illustrator, “Iron Woman,” 300. 

Tenieres, David, “‘Water Fowl,” 244. 

Tennyson, Lord, Enoch Arden, illustration, 248, 286, 287. 

Thayer, Abbott H., as landscapist, “‘ Monadnock,” 90; as 
mural painter, “Florence Protecting the Arts,” 103; 
as portraitist, ““Self-Portrait,” 168. 

Theaters, early buildings, 329, 330; interiors, 327. 

Theiis, Jeremiah, as portraitist, “Elizabeth Rothmaler,” 
10. 

Thomas, Theodore, as musician, 323, 324, 326, 327, 330; 
seropram, 1925: portrait, $27. , 

Thornhill, Sir James, and Smibert, 9. 

Thulstrup, Thure de, “‘ Popular Concert,” 326. 

Tilden, Douglas, as sculptor, “‘Mechanics Fountain,” 201. 

Toledo Museum of Art, material from, 64. 

Trenton, battle of, Leutze’s painting, 35. 

Trinity Church, Boston, decoration, 98, 99. 

Trinity Church, Buffalo, decoration, 117. 

Trumbull, John, and art society, 16; as portraitist, 16, 
17, 21, 23; ““Robert Benson,” 21; ‘“‘ John Adams,” 23; 
as historical painter, 30, 33; “Bunker Hill,” 33. 

Trusts, caricature of issue, 314. 

Turner, Charles Y., as mural painter, “Barter with the 
Indians,” 104. 

Turner, Helen M., as Luminist, “On a Rainy Day,” 173. 

Twachtman, John H., as Luminist, 124-126; “‘Summer,”’ 
125; “Wild Cherry Tree,’ 126; asetcher, “Weeds and 
Mill,” 261. 

Tweed Ring, Nast’s cartoons, 312. 


Urer, Walter, as figure painter, “Solemn Pledge,” 174. 

“United States-Macedonian”’ fight, 233. 

United States National Museum, Washington, material 
from, 49, 235. 

University of Virginia, material from, 209. 

University of Wisconsin, material from, 212. 


Van Cortianpt, Oloff Stevense, Couturier’s portrait, 6. 

Van der Donk, Adrian, Strycker’s portrait, 6. 

Vanderlyn, John, as portraitist, 17, 20; “S. V.S. Wilder,” 
20; as historical painter, 30, 33; “Ariadne,” 33, 235; 
“Marius and the Ruins of Carthage,”’ 236. 

Van Ingen, William B., as mural painter, “Hymns from 
the Belfry,”’ 107. 

Vanity Fair, and caricature, 307, 315, 317. 

Vedder, Elihu, as visionary, 59, 60; “Lost Mind,” 60; 
as mural painter, “Anarchy,” 102; mosaic, ‘‘ Minerva,” 
114; as illustrator, 287, 292; “Building the Canoe,” 
287; ‘““Rubdaiyat,” 292. 


Virginia, colonial house, 58.’ 

Visionary painting, early, 59; recent, 155. 

Volk, Douglas, as portraitist, “Boy with Arrow,” 144. 
Vonnoh, Bessie P., as sculptor, ‘‘ Allegresse,”’ 213. 
Vonnoh, Robert, as portraitist, “S. W. Mitchell,” 144. 


WapswortH ATHENEUM, Hartford, material from, 11. 

Waldo, Samuel L., as portraitist, 17, 26; ‘J. M. White,” 
26. 

Walker, Henry O., as mural painter, “Boy of Winander,” 
101. 

Walker, Horatio, as figure painter, “Woodcutters,” 
149. 

Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College, material from, 9, 
99, 103. 

Wall, W. G., ““New York,’’ 240. 

War of 1812, naval combat, 233. 

Ward, John Q. A., as sculptor, 179, 180, 188; “Beecher,” 
“Garfield,” 188. 

Ward, Samuel A., as composer, 341, 

Warner, Olin L., as sculptor, 189, 191, 192; “Bronze 
Doors,” 191; ‘‘Diana,’’ 192. 

Washington, George, Stuart’s portraits, 18, 19; 
Greenough’s statue, 182; Brown’s statue, 183; Savage’s 
engraving, 229; Peale’s lithograph, 242. 

Washington, Morse’s “Old House of Representatives,” 34; 
decoration of Capitol, 98, 182, 186; doors of Library of 
Congress, 191. : 

Washington University, St. Louis, material from, 64. 

Water color, 75, 85, 133, 137. 

Waugh, Frederick J., as marine painter, ““Roaring Forties,” 
90. 

Webster, Herman A., as etcher, “Quai Montebello,” 265. 

Weinmann, Adolph A., as sculptor, “General Macomb,” 
211; medal, 222. 

Weir, J. Alden, as Luminist, 126, 138; “Upland Pasture,” 
126; as portraitist,“* Follower of Grolier,” 147; as etcher, 
“Little Portrait No: 1,” 262. 

Weir, John F., as genre painter, 50, 56; “Forging the 
Shaft,” 56. 

Weir, Robert W., as genre painter, 37; as illustrator, 
“Drawing Book,” 281. 

Weitenkampf, Frank, acknowledgment to, 224. 

Wenban, Sion L., as etcher, “Munich Railway Yards,” 
263. 

West, Benjamin, influence on portraiture, 4; on Copley, 
11; as artist, 12; “‘Charles Willson Peale,” 12; por- 
traits, by pupils, 13; and Stuart, 18; as _ historical 
painter, 29, 31, 32; “Death on the Pale Horse,” 31; 
“Venus and Adonis,” 32. 

West Point, view, 241. 

Westover Mansion, 58. 

Whistler, James A. M., art, 68, 69; as portraitist, 69, 70; 
“Thames in Ice,” “Little White Girl,’ 69; nocturnes, 
70, 71; ‘“‘Blue and Gold,” ‘* Mother,” 70; “Old Bat- 
tersea Bridge,” 71; “Self-Portrait,” ‘‘Jo,” 250; as etcher 
and. lithographer, 253, 254, 257, 258, 270; ‘‘Black 
Lion Wharf,” 257; “Weary,” “Traghetto,” 258; “The 
Thames,” ‘Dancing Girl,” 270. 

White, Charles H., as etcher, 264. 

White, John B., ‘“‘ Marion and the British Officer,” 239. 

White, Joseph M., Waldo’s portrait, 26. 

Whiteman, Paul, as musician, portrait, 343. 

Whitman, Walt, Johnson’s etching, 238. 

Whitney, J. H. E., as wood engraver, “Jo,” 250. 

Whittier, John G., Poems, illustration, 285, 286. 

Whittredge, Worthington, as landscapist, 49, 82; ““Camp 
Meeting,” 82. 


354 INDEX 


Wilder, Sampson V. S., Vanderlyn’s portrait, 20. 

Wiles, Irving R., as portraitist, “ Mrs. Gilbert,” 143. 

Willis, Nathaniel P., Halpin’s engraving, Sacred Poems, 
illustration, 230. 

Wilson, Mrs. James, Peale’s miniature, 24. 

Winona (Mich.) Public Library, material from, 103. 

Winter, Ezra A., as mural painter, “Sebastian Cabot’s 
Ship,” 113. 

Wisconsin State Capitol, material from, 114. 

Wolf, Henry, as wood engraver, 251, 255, 291; “Lovers,” 
951. 

Wood, Thomas W., as genre painter, “Quack Doctor,” 
52. 

Wood engraving, process, 223; development, examples, 
244-252; painter-, examples, 255, 274-276. 

Woodbury, Charles H., as etcher, “Pilot,” 267. 

Woodville, R. Caton, as genre painter, 37, 53; “Old ’76 and 
Young °48,” 236. 

Woolf, M. A., as caricaturist, “Proud Mother,’’ 309. 


Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum, material from, 7, 14, 
20, 89, 117, 128, 147, 218. 

World War, artistic presentation, 151; signing the peace 
treaty, 173; sculpture, 210, 222. 

Worth, Thomas, as caricaturist, “‘ Ball Season,” 309. 

Wyant, Alexander H., as landscapist, 73-75, 79, 80; 
“Mohawk Valley,” 79; “Old Clearing,” 80. 


YALE SCHOOL OF THE FINE Arts, material from, 9, 23, 25, 

Yale University Library, material from, 320. 

Yates, Cullen, as Luminist, 124. 

Yellowstone, Moran’s “‘Grand Canyon,” 49. 

Yosemite Valley, view, 249. 

Young, Arthur, as caricaturist, “Nice, Cool Sewer,” 317. 

Young, Mahonri, as sculptor, “Rigger,” 217; as etcher, 
“Navajo Watering Place,” 269. 


ZocBauM, Rufus, as naval painter, 50. , 


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